


The Fourth Horseman

by The_She_Devil



Category: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-31
Updated: 2016-02-23
Packaged: 2018-02-13 18:31:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 20
Words: 55,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2160714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_She_Devil/pseuds/The_She_Devil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As a deadly virus spreads through the human population, Nick fights to survive and keep those he loves safe. N/G, Sara friendship, Grissom makes an appearance (so GSR, I guess, briefly).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. May 13, 2016

**Author's Note:**

> As usual, this started out as a short story and turned into a monster. It’s a slow burn, but hopefully you like it. Anyway, enjoy my latest efforts at apocalypse fanfiction.

* * *

**ONE**

* * *

_Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning._

_\-- Winston Churchill_

* * *

May 13, 2016

* * *

I stopped keeping track of the days a long time ago; now the only semblance I have of time is when the seasons change. After a while, it really didn’t seem that important to know what day it was, or how much time had passed. Not when I didn’t have a purpose anymore. No job, no home, no family, no…you.

I’m pretty sure it’s been two winters since they took you. Long after the world had gone to shit, right when mine did. Because as long as we had each other, there was nothing we couldn’t do together. I tried to save you. I swear I did. I hope if you remember anything about me, it’s that. Not the fights, or the way that I never really let you in, or that I never went to any of those bars with you and your friends and how I pretended not to notice the disappointment in your eyes when I said I had to stay home and catch up on paperwork.

I would give anything to go back and spend that time with you instead.

Chances are that you’re dead, along with 99% of the rest of the population. And when I grip my service pistol with white knuckles in the middle of the night, pressing the cool metal into the soft skin beneath my chin, my finger on the trigger, the fact that I’m not sure is the only thing that stops me.

Well, that, and the baby. I can’t just leave her like that.

I just hope that if you’re out there somewhere, you aren’t suffering. I’ve seen now what men will do in times of desperation; what men will do when there is no one there to stop them, to stand up to them. When there are no more morals, no more rules.

When I think about what they could be doing to someone like you, I almost hope you’re dead.

* * *

 

To be continued...


	2. May 5, 2013

* * *

New England Journal of Medicine, May 5, 2013:  _“A new outbreak of avian flu started on April 18, 2013, in a backyard flock of 526 birds at Kandal in the region of Kampot, which borders Viet Nam. Around 300 birds died and the rest have been destroyed.”_

* * *

I stood in the doorway of the locker room, watching you just for a moment, because the only time I got to see you anymore –  _really_ see you – were the times you didn’t know I was looking. Your eyes were closed as you sat on the bench in front of your open locker, one sneaker on, the other untied in your hand. You looked tired lately, and it had taken every ounce of self-control I had not to ask you if you were okay every time I saw you. I didn’t have the right to anymore. You made sure of that.

“Hey, G,” I finally said, stepping into the room. I watched your form stiffen at the sound of my voice before you quickly recovered, making haste in pulling on your other shoe. Because that’s how it was now between us. That’s how it always was at first when you left, although this time you’d promised me it was for good as you threw the house keys at my chest and slammed the door behind you.

“Hey,” you responded, and your eyes shifted towards me almost imperceptibly before refocusing on your locker.

I fumbled with the ceramic in my hands. “I, uh…I found this. When I was cleaning out the cabinets. Didn’t know if you wanted it.”

I almost didn’t catch the knowing expression on your face that had just a hint of amusement to it. I knew you knew when I got anxious or upset, I had to do something to keep my hands busy. There had been plenty of times you’d go to bed angry and wake up to a pristine bathroom or sparkling kitchen. Sometimes, if you were still angry when you woke up, you’d leave a coffee ring stain on the kitchen counter on purpose, or breadcrumbs from a sandwich. Once you met my eyes as you pointedly knocked over an open can of soda, spilling sticky liquid everywhere, and we both glared at each other, jaws clenched, breathing hard, until we simultaneously burst into laughter at our own ridiculousness.

I wondered if you were thinking about the same thing I was when you almost cautiously turned your head to look. And for the first time in days, your eyes met mine, lighting up as the corners of your mouth quirked up, and for a moment I could almost believe that I hadn’t come home to a house devoid of all of your things a few weeks ago.

“Thanks,” you said, taking the coffee mug out of my hands. You brushed your thumb over the words on the front of it – _I snatch kisses and vise versa –_ laughing quietly and shaking your head with amusement. My mother gave it to you years ago. She thought the phrase was sweet and some kind of inside gay joke, which it was, except it was a lesbian joke. After years of tension at the idea of her son dating a man, she’d only been attempting to gift you with a peace offering one Christmas. You’d thought it was equally touching and hilarious, laughing for days, but I’d catch you staring at it with a sort of awe when you weren’t looking.

Quickly, you cleared your throat and shifted your features back into the neutral expression you so carefully wore these days, slipping the coffee mug onto the shelf of your locker, and I felt my heart break just a little more.

“Greg,” I started, my voice strained, but you only shook your head. You never listened to me anyway; you only came back when you were ready, and I never chased you in fear of pushing you further away. We’d been through this so many times throughout our years together. Friends then lovers then boyfriends then nothing. Inevitably, we’d shift back to lovers, sometimes back to boyfriends, then back to nothing when you got restless.

I knew I wasn’t the easiest person to live with. I was hot-headed and tended to lead with my emotions, speaking and acting before thinking. Mostly acting, speaking was never really my thing, which I guess was also part of the problem. I knew I could be emotionally unavailable, retreat within myself and close myself off from you when all you really wanted to do was be there for me like loved ones are supposed to. And the job always came first. Always.

Sure, I had character flaws, but so did you. Like the fact that you would leave me at an instant’s notice when a pretty girl came around and paid attention to you, like that burlesque dancer or Ecklie’s daughter. It was something you never understood, how you could hurt me like that and I would still open the door to my home when you came knocking at two in the morning, sometimes scowling, sometimes drunk, sometimes on the verge of tears.

I didn’t really understand it either. Maybe I was settling, because it was easier to wait for you to come back than to find someone new and start all over again. To have to explain all of my bullshit to a stranger and expect them to understand. So I’d wait for you this time too, just like I always did.

I don’t know what kind of man that made me.

* * *

 

To be continued...


	3. August 28, 2013

* * *

Las Vegas Times, August 28, 2013: _“A flu strain similar to the H3N2 or more commonly known as the avian flu is currently sweeping over China. The pre-winter flu virus has prompted health authorities to encourage the nation of China to have their flu shots early…”_

* * *

I watched you leaning over a conference table, evidence sprawled all over the workspace. Your shoulders were hunched, head hung, eyes closed – the perfect picture of weariness. We’d been so busy lately at the lab, and while it wasn’t unusual for us to take on multiple cases at one time, we were all being pushed to our limits by the sheer volume of crimes.

The crime rate had been rising exponentially over the past few months. Not just here, but all over the United States. Quite possibly the world, but I didn’t really watch the news enough to know for sure; I got enough living it firsthand, I didn’t need to watch it on television when I got home.

Even so, I could feel an electricity in the air, a restlessness in the city that hadn’t been there before. I could see it in the faces of the victims, the suspects, the passersby on the street. A dark expectancy in their expressions, fearful anticipation in their eyes. They were waiting for something. I didn’t know what, but I could see it in my own reflection when I looked in the mirror.

In your face too, although I hated to see it there more than anything. Your brown eyes used to be so bright, so alive, lit with mischief and curiosity and passion. And as you looked at me right then, as you caught me staring, I could see an emptiness that didn’t used to be there. A darkness so deep it threatened to swallow me into the chasm.

Your eyebrows rose expectantly, daring me to ask you how you were. I know you hated it when I hovered. You always said I was too protective, that I tried to shelter you. That I treated you like an inexperienced kid, that I tried to shield you like a helpless maiden. You said you didn’t need to be rescued, that you only needed my respect. I was only trying to stall the inevitable. To stop that hollowness in your eyes. Could you really blame me?

I cleared my throat. “Do you need a hand?”

You smiled dubiously. “How many cases do you have right now, Nick?”

“About a dozen.”

“Maybe you should worry about those before you start worrying about mine,” you responded, your quick wit stinging me just like it always did – just like it was meant to. I wondered if it was really that easy for you to wound me, or if perhaps you did it to keep me away from you. Maybe if you erected those walls around yourself, if you maintained the notion that you hated me, maybe you could keep _yourself_ away from _me_.

Regardless, this was the longest you’d been able to stay away. I had waited every night for you to knock on my door, for you to be waiting for me at my truck after shift, for you to call and ask me to pick you up from some random bar with an obvious slur in your voice, but you never did any of those things. Every day that went by, I was beginning to believe that perhaps you really did mean it this time. I began to wonder if I missed you, or just the idea of you. But when I would wake up in the evenings reaching beside me, when all I found was the cold and empty mattress, I knew it was you I was looking for.

* * *

 

To be continued...


	4. November 15, 2013

Clark County News, November 15, 2013: _“Last year, the flu season was a late one – it didn’t take hold until spring – but this year, it came early and it is a vicious virus: the H3N2 strand, or avian flu, that caused a pandemic in Hong Kong in 1968.”_

* * *

“I haven’t seen the inside of my apartment in a week,” Sara was saying as she pulled a clean set of clothes out of her locker. “I’ve been literally sleeping in the on call room.”

“Yeah, I haven’t been home in three days,” I said, pulling on coveralls as I prepared to head out to two dead bodies found in a dumpster. “I only went home to say hello to my dog and then I came right back. My poor neighbor has been stuck walking and feeding him for almost a month. Luckily she doesn’t have a life.”

“You mean like us?” Sara shot back with a rueful smile.

“I hadn’t even finished logging the evidence from my last case before I got this one,” I stated, shaking my head with disgust. “It’s just sitting in a box in lockup, along with evidence from the last three scenes I’ve worked that I haven’t logged either.”

“This is getting utterly ridiculous,” she spat, either too irritated or too tired to care that she was undressing right in front of me, maybe both. Her bra and underwear were black, a stark contrast to her pale skin. “Half of the staff have been out sick for the better part of a week. When are we going to get some help around here?”

“Jeeze, give a guy some warning when you’re doing that!” you crowed from the doorway, holding a file folder in front of your eyes with a dramatic flourish.

“Nothing you haven’t seen before,” Sara muttered, rolling her eyes, but there was an unmistakable blush in her cheeks. “This _is_ a locker room, you know. It’s not my fault it’s co-ed. What do you want, anyway?”

“I just came from the morgue. Doc Robbins sent for you,” you responded, holding out the case file that had been shielding your eyes. “Your D.B.s in Henderson died from complications from the flu.”

“Both the husband _and_ the wife?” Sara asked dubiously as she snatched the file out of your hands, her button down shirt still hanging open as she read the file. “They were found in bed together. This can’t be right. They were in their forties.”

She fled from the room, frowning as she continued to peruse the results.

“Sara!” you called. She turned back with obvious irritation. “Your shirt.”

She swore quietly as she quickly buttoned up, continuing on her brisk walk as she did so. You turned back to me, unable to hold back a bark of laughter, and it was probably the first time I’d heard you laugh in months. I grinned back at you, stepping closer as I made my way to leave the room. I clapped a hand to your shoulder playfully; I could feel the warmth of your body through your clothes, the same warmth I’d been missing since you left me. Our eyes met, your smile fading, and for a moment I almost swore I saw the anguish in your eyes, the flash of pain, the yearning.

I opened my mouth, the words dangerously balancing on the tip of my tongue, ready to tumble unceremoniously in what surely would’ve been a mess of sentiments and regrets. But for the first time in a long time, I thought you might listen.

“Excuse me, guys,” Morgan interjected, quickly sliding past us. “I overslept, I’m so sorry I’m late. I only went home to catch a quick nap.”

I dared to interpret the look in your eyes as disappointment.

“It’s fine,” I said, nodding, but I wasn’t sure if I was talking to Morgan or you. I squeezed your shoulder comfortingly before releasing my hold. “I’ll see you guys later.”

I heard Morgan loudly blow her nose as I left the locker room.

* * *

 

To be continued...


	5. December 3, 2013

Las Vegas Informer, December 3, 2013:  _“Today the World Health Organization declared the strain of avian-origin H3N2 virus a pandemic. With a shortage of vaccines, officials are warning to take precautionary measures such as not touching your eyes, nose or mouth; frequent hand washing (with soap and water, or with alcohol-based hand rubs); covering coughs and sneezes; avoiding close contact with sick people; and staying home yourself if you are sick.”_

* * *

I was knee deep in boxes that had been haphazardly stacked inside of a storage closet. We had been working nonstop for months, and with bodies piling up outside and the staff dwindling in the lab, there were just too many cases and not enough time. The evidence lockup storage had been filled to maximum capacity weeks ago, with evidence coming in faster than the crime lab could handle. The result was boxes and boxes of bagged and tagged evidence that wasn’t even logged into the system, stuffed into any available space. There wasn’t even a lock on the door of the room I was currently standing in. I wasn’t even sure any of this evidence would hold up in court with the chain of custody compromised so carelessly.

But with the current state of affairs, I wasn’t even sure it really mattered anymore.

I stiffened as I caught a familiar scent. Despite the fact that you stopped dying your hair a long time ago, stopped cutting it into those ridiculous, supposedly trendy styles, you still insisted on using that candy-scented hair product that cost way too much. While I had always teased you about how only you and teenagers must’ve used it, gave you such a hard time about spending your money so frivolously, I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply, allowing the scent to invade my nostrils and surround me like a warm, comforting blanket.

When I opened them again, there was a half of a sandwich that looked like it had been hastily rewrapped in cellophane in front of me. My gaze traveled up your arm, to your face, your complexion pale and the dark circles under your eyes accentuated in the harsh blue florescent lighting of the room. Your eyes looked dead. I could almost imagine pulling you out of one of the freezers in Doc Robbins’ morgue.

“You need to eat something,” you said quietly.

“I’m fine,” I tossed dismissively, waving away your concern. My stomach growled embarrassingly loud at the sight of food, betraying me. The corner of your mouth quirked in a smile, your eyes sparkling for the most fleeting of moments, and I felt a blush creep into my cheeks. “When was the last time _you_ ate something?”

“Where do you think the other half of that sandwich went?” you retorted, holding out the sandwich to me once more. “Take it. I tried to bring you an apple.”

“Tried?” I asked, around a mouthful of turkey and cheese. You must’ve bought it from the vending machine or a gas station, because it tasted like shit, but I was grateful to have anything in my stomach. “What happened to it?”

“I ate it.”

I grinned into my chest, glancing up at you to catch your mischievous and almost challenging expression, and I don’t think I could’ve ever wanted to kiss you more than I did right then. I leaned closer to you before remembering I wasn’t supposed to be doing that anymore. Quickly, I swayed back, clumsily stumbling against the boxes stacked around us. Your warm, strong hands grabbed my forearm and bicep to steady me, a gleam in your eye that always told me you saw right through me, that you knew everything.

I tried to scowl at you, fighting not to smile as I opened my mouth to tell you exactly where to go.

“Hey, guys.” We both turned to see Finn leaning in the doorway; I was sure it was the only thing holding her up. Her nose was red in contrast to the pallor of her face, her posture weary. She pulled a balled up tissue out of one of her shirtsleeves, wiping her raw nose before continuing to speak. “Greg, can you cover the chem lab for a little while?”

“Let me guess,” you muttered. “Hodges called in sick?”

“Please?” she implored, her voice perilously close to a whine.

“Fine,” you conceded, sighing heavily. “It’s not like I don’t have a hundred cases going right now or anything.”

“Thank you,” Finn said, before sneezing five times in rapid succession

“You know, it doesn’t sound like you should really be here either,” I observed.

“What can I do?” she asked, shrugging helplessly. “Morgan’s still out sick, Hodges didn’t come in today, Henry’s about to keel over in Tox. I’m not sure how much longer Russell’s going to make it, he’s pretending he’s not sick but I know he is…I can’t just leave you and Sara to do field work while Greg’s stuck in the lab.”

She coughed into her elbow, waving dismissively as I opened my mouth to make a comment. As she left the doorway, I sighed instead and turned to face you. You were frowning pensively, brow knotted. I had to fight the urge to reach out and smooth away all the lines on your face.

“I guess pretty soon it’ll be just me, you, and Sara,” you murmured. “I’ll be stuck in the lab, of course, while you guys get all the glory.”

“Just like old times.” I grinned, satisfied when you returned it, although you were rolling your eyes. “Don’t worry. We’ll try not to go too hard on you.”

You would never make it back out into the field. 

* * *

 

To be continued...


	6. December 20, 2014

USA Today, December 20, 2014: _“With the death toll rising, many families will be mourning the loss of loved ones this holiday season…”_

* * *

We were sitting in the break room sharing takeout, the first break we’d taken to eat in nearly twelve hours. Sara was picking the pork out of her lo mein, wrinkling her nose as she reminded us for the hundredth time that she was a vegetarian. I think you only screwed up her order because you liked to irritate her, and a part of you still vied for her attention after all these years.

I had never been sure what Sara thought about our relationship. I’d never offered up any information, and she’d never asked; it was just something we didn’t talk about. I know that she was your closest friend, and that you confided in her. That when we got into a fight, you’d inevitably end up at her apartment. I’d picked you up from her place countless times, completely shitfaced and sometimes nearly unconscious, after Sara had called that you were ready to come home. And while I knew that her loyalties would always lie with you, I appreciated that whenever we did get into an argument, when we were together or when we were apart – as we were now – she never treated me differently.

“I bet those pigs didn’t even suffer,” you presently assured her.

“You’re joking, right?” Sara asked, regarding you dubiously as she broke an eggroll in half and inspected the inside of it for traces of fish or mammals. “They electrocute them first to render them incapacitated, and then they slit their throats until they bleed to death. That doesn’t sound like suffering to you?”

“When I was growing up, we used a captive bolt pistol,” I stated casually, just to see Sara’s reaction. “Looks kind of like a gun. It’s a stunner that uses air pressure to penetrate the skull of the animal with a pointed bolt. Pops right in and out. Destroys brain matter but leaves the brain stem intact, so the heart continues to beat during the bleed. Killed my first pig when I was four. It was a piglet, actually. Maybe about four months old.”

I could see you struggling not to laugh out of the corner of my eye as Sara blanched visibly. You took the discarded pieces of pork from the pile she had created on a napkin and held one up with your chopsticks.

“I wonder how old this one was,” you said, and then popped it into your mouth.

“You’re not right,” Sara admonished. One slender finger pointed back and forth between the two of us. “Both of you…are not right.”

Sara sat up suddenly with a troubled expression, her eyes on the doorway behind us. We turned to see Finn standing there, one hand on her mouth, the other clutching the doorframe with white knuckles. She removed the hand from her face, her mouth open to speak, but she seemed unable to find the words.

“What?” I asked anxiously, my heart pounding in my ears. “What is it, Finn?”

“Morgan,” she said, so quietly I almost couldn’t hear her. “Morgan isn’t coming back to work. She…she died this morning at Desert Palms.”

“What happened?” you demanded forcefully, standing as if to break into action, as if there was something you could do, could figure out, could find a solution for.

“The flu,” Finn responded, shaking her head. “She died from the flu. They tried everything, but she didn’t make it. She didn’t…”

“This can’t be,” Sara breathed, her lips in a tight line. She almost looked angry, perhaps disgusted; the same expression she’d worn for weeks after you’d been beaten and left for dead in an alley. “She was so healthy. She was so young. She was…Jesus, she was just a kid.”

“Oh, my God,” you exclaimed quietly. You returned to your chair heavily, sharing a glance with me and Sara.

A deep and wet cough erupted from the doorway, and we all returned our gaze to Finn. She had been sick for weeks, deteriorating each day, struggling to hold out just a little longer so she could stay and help out the team. We could see it on her face, the same realization that I’m sure we were all thinking.

Hundreds of thousands of people had already died. The number was climbing each day. And now a healthy, young woman was dead from a virus that had wiped out up to one million people over forty years ago. If it could happen to Morgan, it could happen to Finn. It could happen to Hodges, to Henry, to Russell, to all the other crime lab and police department employees that were still out sick.

I think that was about the time we all knew just how dire our situation was rapidly becoming.

* * *

 

To be continued...


	7. February 16, 2014

New York Times, February 16, 2014: _“In an attempt to contain the H3N2 virus, today the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in conjunction with the United States Government issued a federal order of quarantine to be carried out by any medical providers upon patients that test positive for the H3N2 virus or are suspected of having the H3N2 virus. Entire hospitals have been dedicated to quarantining patients, with locations such as convention centers and public schools shutting down to accommodate the overflow of patients.”_

* * *

When the government issued a mandatory quarantine order for anyone testing positive or suspected of having the H3N2 virus, that’s when the military showed up. There seemed to be a soldier posted at every doorway, continuously patrolling the halls, inspecting storage closets and just generally meandering around getting in everybody’s fucking way. While they stood casually, smiled cordially, spoke politely, the M16 service rifles slung over their shoulders and held in the standard low ready position told a different story.

I observed the soldiers carefully out of the corner of my eye, paying close attention to the ones who gripped their weapons a little too tightly, the ones who seemed a little too eager, the ones whose gazes fell most often upon those they considered weak. As each day passed, I found my fingers brushing against my sidearm more and more, just to remind myself that at least I had some kind of defense should anyone decide to get trigger happy. I wondered if there would come a day that I wouldn’t be allowed to have it anymore.

I traversed the halls of the crime lab, pushing past a group of military men laughing over their coffees in the hallway after they ignored me when I’d excused myself. I rolled my eyes, gripping the evidence from my latest scene – a dead couple found inside of their home, no evidence of trauma. From the copious amounts of over the counter cold medicines and tissue boxes, I could only assume they had died from the flu, just like everyone else these days.

I never thought the day would come that I’d actually yearn to be called out to a homicide or a suspicious death.

I found you inside of the lab that used to belong to you – that belonged to you again, for the past few months. The same lab that had exploded and thrown you through a glass window, that had left the constellation of scars across your back and shoulders. The first time I had seen them, you’d already forgotten they were there. They felt different than any part of you, and sometimes, if I closed my eyes, I could still feel them. Pink and raised under my fingertips, against my lips. I could still remember the shiver that would run down your spine if I touched them just so.

Lightly, I skimmed my hand across your back as I approached you. You looked up from the test you were working on, sighing heavily when you caught sight of the bags in my hands.

“Are they dead or alive?” you asked bluntly.

“Dead,” I responded, frowning.

“Okay. Does it look like the flu?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” you repeated, nodding, as if coming to a decision. “Okay. Low priority. Put it in the low priority pile.”

I dropped the evidence into a cardboard box labeled with today’s date and priority level. It was already nearly filled, and the day had only started a few hours ago. There were several similar boxes all around the room with different labels, overflowing with bags and bags of samples to process.

“Here’s some more swabs from the hospital,” a uniformed soldier called from the doorway, haphazardly dropping a box on the floor. He kicked it underneath the counter beside three other matching biohazard boxes before leaving just as quickly as he’d arrived.

“Fuck,” you breathed, your expression pained as you rubbed your forehead with your forearm, mindful of your gloved hands. I had never seen you this way in all of my years at the crime lab, looking so overwhelmed and defeated. Not even when you were pulling double-time in the lab and training out in the field while taking classes at UNLV to become a CSI.

I indicated the box the soldier had just dropped off. “What is that?”

“Overflow from Desert Palms,” you responded. “Their lab can’t handle all the flu testing so they’re kicking back specimens to us. It’s not rapid testing either, they want viral cultures.”

I gaped at him. “How do they expect you to get through all of this and do the hospital’s job on top of that?”

“I don’t know,” you said, and shrugged. “It’s not like it matters anyway.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, my voice forceful in a flash of anger. “Of course it matters. They _all_ matter, Greg.”

You scoffed, shaking your head. “Are you fucking blind? Do you not see how backlogged I am? Months, Nick. _Months_. These samples?” You pointed to a box before kicking it violently across the room, crashing it into another stack of boxes that seemed precariously close to toppling over. “These are from December. December! And I’m the only one running them – I don’t even think there’s a day shift tech anymore! Not that any of these samples are even still viable, but that doesn’t matter, either. You know why?”

Suddenly, you lost all steam, leaning heavily against the counter, gripping the edges in a way that made me believe it was the only thing stopping you from hitting the floor. I fought the urge to go to you, to support you, comfort you; you were so tightly wound, your body trembling with tension, I was afraid the slightest touch would cause you to fly apart at the seams.

“Because they’re all dead,” you finally said, your voice barely above a whisper. “Every name I pull out of there and run through the database comes back. They’re dead, Nick. Every single fucking one of them.”

“So is Finn,” Sara said quietly from the doorway. Her eyes were red, jaw clenched in an effort to control the quivering in her lip. “I went to her apartment. I hadn’t heard from her in weeks. I went to check on her, to see how she was feeling. I had to break in through a window.”

She raised her right hand, covered in scratches that extended down her arm. Quickly, I reached for her, pulling her into the lab and guiding her to a stool. She sat without protest, almost dazed, and I kept one hand at her elbow, the other across her shoulders to support her. You clumsily climbed over some boxes to pull a first aid kit out of one of the cabinets, upending one of the boxes and scattering bags of samples all over the floor in your haste. You didn’t even give the mess a second glance as you swiftly went to work examining Sara’s wounds.

“She’s gone, guys,” she continued, shaking her head. “I was too late. She’s gone.”

“It’s not your fault, Sara,” I stated, only then realizing she was clutching an evidence bag. “What is that?”

“Swab,” she replied simply, and I nearly scoffed. Only Sara would consider the evidence at a time like that. “I wanted to be sure…that’s what killed her.”

“Has anyone heard from Hodges?” you asked suddenly. I could see the frown etched deeply on your face, your brow knotted in concentration as you dabbed at Sara’s scrapes with a cotton ball doused in antiseptic. You looked up and met my eyes. I shook my head. Sara glanced up, coming out of her trance with a sharp exhalation.

“I haven’t heard from Henry either,” you continued, tossing bloodied cotton into the biohazard bin.

“Russell’s been out too,” I said quietly, a sinking feeling in my gut, twisting at my insides and I almost felt as if I might throw up. “David. Brass.”

“God,” Sara breathed. “What’s happening to us?”

Shouting from the hallway pulled all of our attention to the glass windows of the lab. We watched with wide eyes as a group of soldiers escorted several employees down the hall, physically holding them in a way that indicated there was no negotiating in the matter.

“Please!” Mandy from fingerprinting pleaded, and I absently wondered if she had lost her glasses in the commotion and whether or not she would need them. She was crying, and I could see the grip on her arm was tight, even from across the hall. My body vibrated with the urge to move, to help her, but the M16s clutched tightly in the solders’ hands kept me rooted to the spot. “Please, I don’t need to go to quarantine! It’s just allergies, I get them every year!”

“Can’t we at least run the testing first?” an officer I vaguely recognized from the day shift asked, his expression full of fear. “We have a lab right there! They can run the testing! It only takes a few minutes!”

“This is unconstitutional!” exclaimed an ambulance chaser I’d often seen in the LVPD waiting room, a balding older man that I didn’t know the name of. “I’m a lawyer, I know my rights! You can’t do this!”

“At least let me call my wife,” the officer continued, but the soldiers’ faces remained impassive as they ignored the pleadings from their captives. “Just let me call my wife so she knows where I’ll be!”

“I can give you a sample right now!” Mandy cried, before turning to look at us through the lab windows. I felt Sara’s form stiffen in my arms, my own posture straightening with surprise at the attention. “I can give you a sample! Please, take a sample. Don’t let them take me without a sample! Nick, Greg, don’t let them take me! Sara, please!”

We’d all heard stories about the quarantine zones. Anyone that had ever entered one had never returned. They’d either died or had gone missing, unaccounted for somewhere in the system. Only God knew what had happened to them. I gripped Sara’s arm tighter, my other hand that had been resting across her shoulders reaching out across her back to the other side of her, where you stood. I touched your arm, grabbing your attention. You both turned to look at me.

I’m sure the terror on your faces was reflected on my own.

“We stick together now, okay?” I said, my voice hoarse. I gritted my teeth, biting back the stinging in my eyes. You and Sara both nodded numbly. “Just the three of us. We stick together.”

We never saw Mandy again.

* * *

 

To be continued...


	8. April 19, 2014

Los Angeles Times, April 19, 2014: _“A series of demonstrations across several cities in the United States quickly escalated into riots yesterday, resulting in dozens of deaths and injuring hundreds. The demonstrations began as protests against the mandatory quarantine implemented by the CDC and the U.S. Government back in February. Thousands have died in quarantine, with countless more missing and unable to be located.”_

* * *

I was sure the only employees left at the crime lab were you, Sara, and I. And Ecklie, who had not taken Morgan’s death well. It was to be expected, when your only daughter who had to have barely been thirty years old – young, healthy, beautiful, so full of energy – was dead from a virus that should’ve only caused her to miss a few days of work, not miss the rest of her life.

She had been one of the first to get the H3N2 vaccine, but the virus had mutated, rendering all of those flu vaccines useless. It had taken millions of lives in the United States alone, wiped out entire nations across the globe. It had become the most deadly plague since the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, and it didn’t appear to be slowing down.

We had become slaves to the virus. We hardly even investigated crimes anymore, just collected nasal swabs and ran tests for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in between tracking supposed terrorists – civilians who were making the military uncomfortable with their anti-government/anti-military sentiments.

We were so backed up, all the samples we collected were piling up in every available space, unprocessed and disregarded. It didn’t even seem worth it anymore, but what we did and didn’t do wasn’t up to us. It was all enforced by the military that was ever-present in the halls of the lab and police department. A major had taken up residence in the Sheriff’s office, captains and lieutenants staking claim in Russell’s old office, the same office I still thought of as Grissom’s.

Sometimes I wondered where he was; if he’d died from the flu like everyone else, had been taken to quarantine. Maybe he was on a small island in the jungle somewhere; knowing him, it was just as likely a scenario. And then one day he showed up, peeking his head around the corner of the locker room and rapping timidly on the door frame.

“Gris!” I exclaimed, hastily crossing the room and engulfing him in an embarrassing display of affection, but it was so good to see him alive and well, I couldn’t help myself. I inhaled the scent of him, reveling in the solidness of his body against mine. “What are you doing here?”

“Sara said you guys could use a hand,” he stated, cocking one eyebrow as he took a step back, but I could see he was fighting not to smile.

“We sure could,” I said, ushering him into the hallway to find her. “Have you seen Greg yet? He got sent back to the lab after all the techs…well, you know.”

_Died_. I couldn’t seem to bring myself to utter the word, but he nodded in understanding.

“No, I haven’t seen him yet,” he responded. “But I’m glad to know he’s still here, even if he is stuck in the lab.”

“You’re telling me,” I agreed, still hardly able to believe Gil Grissom was walking down the hall with me. I clapped him on the shoulder cordially, a part of me subconsciously needing to feel him to know that he was real. I caught sight of you through the glass walls of your lab, raising my hand and ready to call out to you in my excitement when the man standing beside you gave me pause.

He was one of the lieutenants, an older guy, classically handsome and well built. O’Grady, I think his last name was, although I wasn’t sure of his first. He was standing close to you – too close, his fingertips trailing down the sleeve of your lab coat. You were stiff, your jaw clenched, expression tight as your eyes focused on the workspace in front of you. He was talking into your ear, and I could see that you were leaning away from him in an effort to create space between the two of you, but that didn’t stop him from leaning closer. He was gripping his service rifle casually, but I was sure it wasn’t lost on you that he was holding it instead of allowing it to hang from the sling on his shoulders like it should’ve if he was just having a friendly conversation.

“Hey, Gris, why don’t you find Sara, and I’ll grab Greg and catch up,” I said, my gaze never leaving you. I could see Grissom in my peripheral vision carefully observing the scene before he reluctantly agreed and walked away. Quickly, I pushed my way into your lab, loudly bursting through the door and smiling broadly. “Hey, G, got those results for me yet?”

I could see the relief in your eyes, your breath releasing from your lungs in a burst. “Yes. I have them right over here, just…I’m sorry, can you excuse us?”

“Of course,” Lt. O’Grady said, nodding tersely before turning to leave the room. He cast one last look at you before exiting.

“What was that about?” I asked quietly, standing beside you and looking pointedly at your computer monitor, but I was watching O’Grady watch you out of the corner of my eye.

“He’s got a thing for good looking lab techs,” you said, smiling half-heartedly as you typed absently on the keyboard. You met my gaze, and I could see how uncomfortable you really were despite the fact that you were trying to brush it off. “It’s fine. He’s just…a little overenthusiastic.” You smiled again, but it still didn’t reach your eyes. “What can I say? I’m a great catch.”

“I know,” I said without hesitation, and this time when you smiled – in a bashful way that was much more charming than it had any right to be – your eyes lit up. I wondered if I tried to kiss you now, if you would let me. If I invited you back into our home, if I asked you to pick up where we left off, if you would say yes. Of course, now wasn’t the time or place, but it never seemed to be. Maybe it was about time I _made_ it the right time and place.

 Before it was too late.

“Guys,” we heard from the doorway, and saw Sara grinning for the first time in what seemed like months. Grissom was standing beside her, his hand protectively resting at the small of her back, and I couldn’t help grin as well. “Did you see I called in the reinforcements?”

* * *

To be continued...

 


	9. May 5, 2014

TIME, May 5, 2014: _“Social unrest continues as the United States declares martial law. Mandatory curfew begins at sundown and ends at sunrise. However, officials are urging Americans to stay inside during the day if possible, as violent crime contributes to the rising death toll throughout the nation…”_

* * *

You weren’t in the lab. You weren’t in the break room. You weren’t outside sneaking a cigarette from the pack that I knew you kept in the back of your locker in case of emergencies, Camel Lights that you shared with Sara. I had been back from a scene for at least an hour, and I still hadn’t managed to run into you. I usually wouldn’t have worried, but we were no longer living in usual times. I navigated the hallways quickly, my heart pounding against my ribcage as I continued to search for you.

After I couldn’t find you in any of the usual places, I began searching the storage facilities and evidence lockers. I opened the door to one of the chemical closets, peeking inside and nearly leaving before I heard voices in the back of the room.

“I don’t want any trouble.” Your voice was barely a whisper, and although you were speaking quietly, I could still hear the wavering of fear in your tone.

“Neither do I,” another voice said. I quietly stepped further inside, peeking around several shelving units when I saw you. You were backed against a corner, gripping a glass bottle in your hand so tightly I thought it might burst, your other hand flat against the wall. Lt. O’Grady was standing in front of you, trapping you, the barrel of his gun pressed lengthwise right between your legs. Your eyes were closed, expression pained as you shrank away from him, the breath coming out of your nose in quick, loud bursts. There was a splash of pink on the left side of your face, and I wondered if he’d struck you.

“What do you want from me?”

“Guy as smart as you should be able to figure that out,” the lieutenant replied, his lips close to your ear, his free hand pressed against the wall beside your head. You flinched as he brought his fingertips to caress your inflamed cheek.

“Is there a problem here?” I asked, my fists clenched at my sides, vision tunneling to the man threatening what I still considered to be my property despite the fact that you hadn’t been mine in over a year. The only thing stopping me from beating him into the ground was the M16 clutched tightly in his hands as he turned to face me.

“No,” he said so casually, a smile brightening his features. “No problem. Sanders and I were just talking. Right, Sanders?”

You cleared your throat, eyes averted to anywhere but O’Grady or myself. “Yeah. We were just talking.”

“We don’t have time for chit-chat right now,” I stated, jerking my thumb over my shoulder. “There’s lots of work to be done out there, Greg.”

“Right, sorry,” you murmured, almost in a daze. “Sorry.”

The lieutenant stepped away, heading towards the exit before pausing briefly to look over his shoulder at you. “We’ll finish this conversation later.”

“Yeah,” you agreed, nodding emphatically. “Later.”

The door closed behind the soldier, too loud in the quiet space of the storage closet. Your breath exploded from you, the tension releasing from your body as you nearly melted against the wall. I wondered if you could stand on your own.

“Greg,” I began, reaching for you, but you cut me off quickly.

“I’m fine.”

“What the fuck – ?”

“I said I’m fine!” you yelled, pushing past me and heading towards the door. “Just leave it alone, Nick. You don’t need to fix everything.”

The sound of the door closing again reached my ears, and I nodded as I stood alone in the storage closet, rubbing a hand against my mouth anxiously. Leave it alone? That wasn’t an option. And, no, I didn’t need to fix everything. I knew you hated it when I took on every cause that came my way, when I needed to validate myself by acting as the knight in shining armor, even when it was hopeless. But I knew this was something I _could_ fix. Knew it was something I had to.

* * *

I watched him the rest of the night, Lt. O’Grady. His office was the same one that Finn used to inhabit. He spent most of his time there, alone, but there was always a soldier or two right outside his door. So I waited until he was the most vulnerable, when he was in the men’s room, alone, taking a piss.

He was standing at the urinal, his gun slung across his back as he held his dick in one hand, the other braced against the wall. I nodded at him in recognition before casually walking towards the stalls. As I stepped behind him, I steeled myself before turning to his back, grabbing the gun and lifting the sling, pulling back and twisting the fabric until it was taught against his neck, cutting off his air supply. He reacted quickly, grabbing at his neck in panic before remembering himself. He elbowed me in the ribs, the air escaping my lungs, but I didn’t relent. I pushed him against the urinal with my entire weight, his head caroming off of the porcelain and we both fell to the floor.

I landed on top of him, pulling the gun off of him and tossing it to the side of the room. I didn’t need it; I didn’t want to kill him. Well, I did, but not really. I straddled his body, turning him onto his back and punching him hard in the jaw with a right hook. Again. Again. Again. There was blood on the floor, on my fist, on his face. I beat him relentlessly, until his face resembled hamburger.

By the time I stopped hitting him, he’d already stopped moving a long time ago. I stood up, crossing the room to the sinks, catching my expression in the mirror. My face was covered in blood spatter, my shirt, my hands. I cleaned myself up, taking off my shirt and throwing it in the trash before I took the bag out and tied it in a knot. Clutching the garbage bag in my hand, I took one last look at the man on the floor.

I didn’t know if he was dead. I wondered if I should worry that I didn’t care.

* * *

Some hours later, the sun just beginning to rise, you were smoking a cigarette on a bench located on the side of the crime lab. You were leaning forward, elbows on your thighs, your head in your hands. I sat down beside you, my thigh brushing yours, and you startled at the contact.

“Damn, you scared me,” you hissed, then regarded me with distaste. “I know what you did.”

“So?” I retorted, shrugging.

“ _So?_ You almost killed that guy, Nick. He’s in a fucking coma.”

“What did you expect me to do?” I snapped. “You know what he wanted from you. He would’ve done whatever he could to get it.”

“I don’t need you to protect me,” you spat back. “I can take care of myself.”

“I know that,” I replied, and held out my hands in a helpless gesture. “But you heard him, Greg. The conversation wasn’t over. And the next time he had an M16 aimed at your crotch, you might not’ve been so lucky. I saw the opportunity. I took it.”

I failed to mention that I’d waited for an opportunity to present itself, but that was neither here nor there.

“Whatever.” You took a drag off of your cigarette, shaking your head forlornly. Sat quietly for a moment before you stuck the cigarette between your lips and turned towards me slightly to take my right hand, squinting one eye against the smoke. You ghosted gentle fingertips across my swollen and bruised knuckles, your other hand cradling my palm. “Do you need someone to look at this?”

“I’m fine.” In an attempt at casual, I shrugged and tried to smile. “Time heals all wounds, right?”

“Sometimes,” you replied quietly, kept one hand in mine, and for a moment we sat there in silence, holding hands as we watched the sun creep out from beneath the skyline, rising into another day sure to be filled with death and destruction and misery. I idly watched smoke plumes from some kind of fire in the distance – probably another riot – and wondered if I would be called to that scene, if anyone would even bother to dispatch us.

“Are you okay?” I asked, breaking the silence.

“No,” you responded immediately, and when the door to the lab opened, you gave my fingers a gentle squeeze before releasing my hand. “Are you?”

“No,” I said honestly. I watched as Sara joined us, sitting down on the opposite side of you. You extended your cigarette to her; she grasped your wrist, pulling your fingers towards her mouth and taking a long drag off of it before releasing her hold of you and exhaling with what sounded like relief. I asked, “You okay, Sara?”

“No,” she said simply.

And we sat there like three wise monkeys. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

If only.

* * *

 

To be continued...


	10. July 4, 2014

USA Today, July 4, 2014: _“USA Today would like to wish the nation a happy Independence Day, and to remind all Americans to cooperate fully with the military to ensure many more safe and happy holidays to come…”_

* * *

_“Do you ever think about leaving?”_

_“Leaving Vegas?”_

_“Yeah.”_

_“And going where?”_

_“Anywhere,” you said. “Just getting in your car and driving. Until you hit the ocean, or the mountains. Until you run out of gas. Until you get somewhere like here, just stay here forever.”_

_My gaze traveled past your prone form and focused on the sun setting over the lake outside the window of our cabin, the same cabin we’d been renting on Wolf Lake in Tennessee for years. The sunlight cast a glow of oranges and yellows and reds across your back, lighting up your bare skin with pseudo fire. I shivered at the illusion, brushing my fingers across the scars juxtaposed to smooth skin._

_“How would you make money?” I asked._

_“I wouldn’t need money,” you replied resolutely._

_“Need money for food.”_

_“I’d fish in the lake. Or hunt deer or something.”_

_I regarded you dubiously. “You don’t know how to hunt. And have you even been fishing before?”_

_“You can teach me.”_

_I shook my head at your determination, grinning with amusement._

_“You’d leave your whole life behind, babe?” I asked, my hand travelling lower, to where the bed sheets met your lower back. You closed your eyes and hummed contentedly, face pressed against the pillow of our bed. “To live on a lake in the middle of the woods?”_

_You opened your eyes and met mine, the fire in them brighter than the sunset, making me catch my breath. “Wouldn’t matter as long as you were there.”_

I woke up with a start, swallowing hard before exhaling sharply. I was in the break room of the crime lab, leaning back against the worn leather couch. I’d only sat down to take a breather, not to catch a cat nap, and I idly wondered how long I’d been asleep. I yawned deeply, stretching my sore limbs and arching my aching back. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d slept in a bed – I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d been home. My elderly neighbor, Mrs. Nguyen, had offered to take my dog in several months ago; at least Sammy might’ve been getting some TLC, which I was in much need of.

I grabbed some bitter coffee before heading back out into the lab. Grissom had helped only marginally to put a dent into the daily work, but any type of assistance was a welcome respite. And while he was no longer in a position of authority, his sagacity and steady demeanor were helping immensely with morale. We felt like a team again, like we had a sense of direction in all of this, even if it was minimal in the grand scheme of things.

After all, the whole world was going to shit, and everyone knew it.

I needed to restock my kit with – not surprisingly – gloves and swabs before heading out to my next series of scenes. I headed into the stock room, hoping they had my size gloves so I didn’t have to squeeze my large hands into mediums again when I heard muffled coughing in the back of the room. Carefully, I slipped past a series of shelves, following the noise until I found you hunched in the corner of the room, hacking gracelessly into a cluster of tissues.

“No,” I breathed, my stomach twisting violently, my heart pounding so hard against my ribcage I was sure it would break free. You startled at the sound of my voice, turning to face me with a look of sheer terror before relaxing at the familiar sight of me. “No, no, no, no, no…”

“Nick. It’s fine,” you assured me hastily, as I quickly approached you. “I’m fine.”

“How long?” I asked, gripping your shoulders in my hands, squeezing tightly, as if I let go now, you’d disappear right where you stand. “How long have you been sick?”

“A few days,” you replied quietly, casting your eyes to the ground, and then you sniffled. “I’m really fine.”

I took a deep breath, steeling myself. “Did you test yourself?”

“Yeah.”

“And?”

You only nodded.

“No,” I whispered. “No, this isn’t happening, this isn’t happening, Greg. What if someone sees you? God, if I had been anyone else – ”

“What am I supposed to do?” you cut in bitterly. “Call in sick?”

My mind was racing, my breathing coming in short bursts as I tried to formulate some kind of game plan. The military was keeping us here, watching our every move like hawks. Abled-bodied persons were a rarity these days, and they couldn’t afford to lose anyone. There were no more days off, no going home without an escort in case someone thought about jumping ship. If you didn’t want to work, they took you to a detention center. If you were sick, they tested you; and if you tested positive, they took you to quarantine, never to be seen again. They had developed a new rapid test for the virus that was supposedly 100% accurate. One finger-prick would decide someone’s fate. It had decided yours.

“Okay,” I said suddenly, releasing my hold of you to fish the keys to my SUV out of my pocket. “Give me your keys and your cell phone.”

“What?” you asked, but you were already reaching into your jeans. I grabbed the keys to your car from your hand, replacing them with my own and pushing them into your chest.

“Take my keys, take my truck to your place and pack up only what you need,” I told you quickly, glancing over my shoulder to make sure we were still alone. I turned the volume off on your cell phone and shoved it inside of a box beside us, burying it deep in cotton balls and lint-free wipes. “Grab anything you have that we can use. Any canned food, medical supplies, camping gear, stuff like that, do you understand me?”

“Nick, what are you – ?”

“Then I want you to go to my house,” I continued, cutting you off. “Go to my house and pack up everything that I have. Wait for me there, okay? Just wait for me there, I’ll cover you here, I’ll get some excuse, and then I’ll meet you at home, okay? You can’t take your phone, they’ll be able to track you, so just do exactly as I say and then wait for me, okay?”

“Nick,” you began, your expression displaying your bewilderment. You looked at me as if I’d just lost my mind, and perhaps I had. You opened your mouth, and I was sure you were going to protest, to tell me I was insane, to tell me to go to hell or to stop trying to save you, to stop trying to fix everything. But you only asked, “Where are we going?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I declared, slipping my hands on either side of your face and pulling you close to me, looking into your eyes so full of fear and uncertainty. I hoped you could see the strength and assurance in mine. I hoped you couldn’t see that I was just as scared as you were. “I will not let them take you, do you understand me? I will not let them take you away from me.”

You nodded vigorously, gripping my wrists tightly. “Nick…”

“Go,” I said, and it took everything I had to let go of you and push you towards the door. At the last moment I grabbed your arm, warm skin beneath my fingertips, and you turned back towards me. “Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t let anyone see you. Don’t go to your locker. Just leave.”

“Okay,” you agreed quietly. You hesitated briefly. “Tell Sara…tell her I…”

“I will.”

* * *

I knew I didn’t have long before they would start looking for you. You were still working in the lab, your absence would be noticed fairly quickly. At least if your car was in the parking lot, perhaps they would think you were taking a break or grabbing supplies from the stockroom, searching the evidence lockers, anything except what you were really doing.

Packing up our whole lives into an SUV, racing against the clock to get the fuck out of here before they could take you away.

I grabbed an assignment from dispatch, logged in my name and quickly headed for my locker. If I left here pretending to go to a scene and instead headed straight home, how much time would pass before they realized I wasn’t showing up? Thirty minutes tops, maybe another fifteen on top of that before they started looking for me. Perhaps an hour before they’d show up at my house.

I cursed under my breath, trying to remain stoic as I grabbed my kit and headed in search of Sara. She was sitting in a layout room, sharing what I was sure was a vegetarian burger with Grissom. I almost knocked, but for a moment I stood there and watched the way her eyes lit up as he spoke to her. Watched the way his hand casually brushed across her arm in familiar intimacy. My chest tightened at the thought that this would be the last time I’d ever see them.

“Guys,” I began, hyperaware of the two soldiers in the corner of the room laughing loudly at an image on one of their cell phones, another few soldiers meandering around in the hallway directly behind me. Sara and Grissom paused in their conversation to look at me expectantly. “I’m heading out to a scene.”

“Do you need a hand?” Sara asked, delicately wiping at the sides of her mouth with a napkin. “We were just taking a quick break, but if you need some help…”

“No, no,” I assured her. I opened my mouth to speak, hesitating as I cast my eyes to the soldiers and then back to Sara and Grissom. God, everything I could have said to them, but even if those soldiers weren’t there, I doubt I would ever have been able to say everything I should.

Sara raised one of her eyebrows, her eyes narrowing in suspicion. “Nick?”

“Sara, Greg was listening to this song the other day in the lab,” I stated, even though we had not heard music in the lab for at least six months. A detail I knew she wouldn’t miss. “I don’t remember who it was by, do you think you might’ve heard it?”

“How did it go?” she asked slowly, sharing a glance with Grissom before turning back to me.

_“Every foe that ever I faced_

_The cause was there before we came_

_And every cause that ever I fought_

_I fought it full without regret or shame_

_But…but as the dark…”_

I trailed off, unable to recall the rest of the lyrics, but even if I knew the words, I didn’t think I could say them. I cleared my throat, blinking away the burning in my eyes as she continued where I left off.

_“But as the dark does die,_

_As the curtain is drawn_

_And somebody’s eyes must meet the dawn_

_And if I see the day_

_I’d only have to stay_

_So I bid farewell in the night and be gone._

“Bob Dylan _._ ‘Restless Goodbye,’” she said quietly, but I was already gone.

* * *

As soon as I got to your car, I opened the side panel of the dash and pulled the wiring to your GPS. Quickly, I drove out of the parking garage of the LVPD, throwing my cell phone to the side of the road and heading for my house, praying that you would be there waiting for me when I arrived.

I wanted to floor this overpriced pocket rocket you’d bought yourself last year for your 39th birthday, but I knew I had to be as discreet as possible. As I shifted the clutch smoothly and drove no more than five miles over the speed limit, I remembered teasing you about having a midlife crisis. You’d only scoffed at the idea, insisting that if you bought it _next_ year, when you turned forty, only then would it be considered a clichéd purchase.

Traffic was heavy coming out of downtown. The city had been mostly abandoned a long time ago, with the majority of casinos and businesses closing due to the lack of live patrons. Now it seemed the only people coming in and out of the Strip were the military and city employees, and usually getting out of the city was a breeze. Of course the one time it was imperative for me to get home as quickly as possible, I was moving at ten miles an hour.

“Come _on_ ,” I muttered with frustration, and slammed my palm against the steering wheel. As I crept closer to the intersection, I could see smoke up ahead. I rolled down the window, sticking my head out in an attempt to get a better view of what was going on. Several patrol cars and military vehicles flew by on the opposite side of the road but traveling in the same direction I was facing.

Anxiously, I drummed my fingers against the steering wheel, my heart fluttering in my chest. I glanced at the clock for the hundredth time. It’d been nearly thirty minutes since I’d sent you out of the lab. Surely, by now, someone would be looking for you. Maybe they’d already tried to call you and tracked down your cell phone in the storage closet. Maybe they were scanning the parking lot for your car and finding it missing. Maybe they were tracking your GPS and realizing it was disconnected. Maybe they were at your apartment, traveling much faster with their sirens than I could even in this sports car – at least, if I didn’t want to be noticed.

I just hoped you were already at my house, waiting for me. I hoped _they_ wouldn’t be at my house, looking for me and finding you. It was only a matter of time, and now traffic wasn’t moving at all. I shifted my eyes to the empty lanes on the opposite side of the road beside me. Took a deep breath. Waited. Waited.

“Fuck this.”

I jerked the steering wheel, tires squealing against the pavement as I shifted gears and floored it. I fishtailed minimally before regaining control of the vehicle and sped past seemingly endless miles of traffic. Kept one eye on the rearview mirror, the other on the road ahead of me. There were no cars heading in my direction; something was wrong. But I had to make it to the other side of the street to reach the fastest route to my house; if I had to turn around and take the long way home, without a doubt I would be too late.

As I rapidly approached the intersection, I could see the smoke getting thicker and darker. There were multiple cars involved in a crash, flames licking at the sky from the wreckage. One car was spray painted with the symbol of one of the anti-government “Patriot” groups that had formed since the President had declared martial law.

There had been plenty of these Patriot groups popping up all over the country, one in specific gaining traction called We the People. Anyone suspected of associating with any of these groups was labeled a terrorist and immediately taken into custody, but trials were nearly unheard of. Only those most prominent in the groups that had been arrested were punished within full view of the media in an attempt to dissuade others from joining. I wasn’t sure what happened to those who were detained but never tried.

I could hear gunfire through my still open window. For one brief moment, I wished I’d closed it before the rational part of my brain reminded me that glass wasn’t really much of a threat to bullets. I could see SWAT and military vehicles up ahead, positioning themselves opposite to a group of men and women who I assumed were with the We the People Patriot group. Both sides were exchanging gunfire, bullets spraying back and forth across the intersection.

Resolutely, I kept the pedal to the floor, exhaling sharply as one of the SWAT vehicles exploded. I couldn’t turn back now. I had to make it across the intersection. I had to make it home. I had to make it to you. As terrified as I was, I only had to remind myself that you didn’t have a snowball’s chance in Hell without me, that they would take you away never to be seen again, and it was enough to keep me going.

I didn’t want to think of what it meant that you’d tested positive. I didn’t want to think about Finn and Hodges and Russell and Morgan and everyone else I had ever known that had gotten the virus and was now gone. I only knew I had to keep you out of quarantine, and I’d figure the rest out after that.

I sped through the intersection, swerving around a group of soldiers and nearly losing control of the car in my haste. I could hear pangs against the side of the vehicle, the back window exploded, and I ducked as best I could as glass sprayed against the back of my neck and head. There was an explosion right beside me, sending the car into a wild spin and I fought to keep hold of the steering wheel as it jerked violently in my hands.

“Shit!” I yelled, as the car finally came to a stop, but I could barely hear myself over the ringing in my ears. More gunfire, another series of explosions, and I quickly shifted gears and got out of there. I briefly glanced in the rearview mirror, watching high rise buildings and casinos and Las Vegas burn to the ground behind me.

* * *

I pulled into the driveway next to my SUV, relief flooding me at the sight of you. You quickly came out of the house to meet me, stopping short and gaping almost comically at the condition of your car before meeting my eyes through the front windshield. I could see the panic in your eyes, the fear, the confusion. You were afraid for me. Because you loved me. And, God, I loved you too.

“Jesus, Nick, are you okay?” you asked breathlessly, as I stepped out of the car. I moved to the SUV, opening the driver’s side door and finding myself pleasantly satisfied to see you’d already disabled the GPS. You were still talking behind me, your voice frantic as you hovered so closely I could feel your body heat. “Nick, you’re bleeding. What happened? Talk to me!”

“I’m fine,” I assured you, turning and grabbing your elbow and brusquely guiding you into the house. I glanced over my shoulder briefly, then closed the door and locked it, the deadbolt resounding with a comforting thud. “What did you pack up?”

“Everything you said,” you replied, following me into the kitchen. I started opening and closing cabinets; all of the food items were gone. “I got all the kitchen stuff. Clothes. Toiletries. All the camping gear.”

“What about my guns?” I asked, moving into my office. You were right on my heels.

“Yeah,” you stated. “And the ammo. Nick, will you just stop for a minute and let me look at you?”

“We don’t have time,” I admonished. “Do you have any cash?”

“Yeah, like, twenty bucks.”

I knelt down in front of my safe, punched in the security code and pulled open the heavy door. Quickly, I started pulling out bricks of cash and thrusting them into your hands.

“Jesus,” you breathed, your eyes wide. “What, did you rob a bank?”

“No, I got it from the evidence locker at work,” I told you very seriously. I paused for a brief moment before laughing at your shocked expression. “I’ve been stashing it away, G.”

I was sure if you hadn’t been balancing thousands of dollars of cash in your hands you would have hit me. Instead, you rolled your eyes, shaking your head as you followed me to the desk. I pulled a duffle bag out of the closet, holding it open as you dumped the money inside. Once your hands were free, you grasped my wrist, pulling me close to you.

“Hey,” you said quietly, reaching up with one hand to touch the side of my face. Gentle, tentative fingers trailed over what must’ve been a cut on the side of my eyebrow because it stung when you touched it, and when you pulled your hand away there was blood on your fingertips; they were trembling. You met my gaze, your eyes shining intensely, irises the color of expensive chocolate, the kind that melted so smoothly on the tongue.

“Greg – ”

“This is why I never let you drive my car,” you whispered, warm hands curled around my biceps, and I wondered if you spoke quietly so I wouldn’t hear the tremor in your voice.

“I know,” I murmured, my hands resting easily on your hips.

“You had it for thirty minutes, Nick.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re a mess. Let’s clean you up, get some fresh clothes on, and then we’ll go, okay? ”

I took a deep breath. “Okay. But we need to hurry. We only have enough light left to get out of the city.”

* * *

After only minimally cleaning myself up, I checked the SUV to see what you’d packed. You’d gotten pretty much everything we needed, I noticed, as I dug through suitcases and duffel bags and boxes. I reached the back of the pile, something bright red catching my eye. In a small box, I found the little stuffed devil with a tee shirt reading “Hot Stuff” that you’d given me for our first Valentine’s Day together. I dug further into the box, finding holiday cards we’d given each other – the romantic ones I always put so much thought into, searching the card aisle forever just to find the perfect card; the same ones that you always bought at the last minute and were always the perfect amount of sexy and funny. I found loose photographs of our team from softball games and the yearly LVPD cookout and the group photo of the nightshift when you’d finally passed your proficiency test. I found pictures of Warrick’s son, of Lindsey, of my family during a summer reunion, of your parents and us.

At the very bottom, I found a framed photograph of you and me, my favorite photograph of us. It was from our first date, at a restaurant on the Strip taken by one of those girls walking around with a camera and taking pictures of couples for cash. I always politely declined when they came around, but of course you wanted to pose for the photograph and had insisted on purchasing it. You immediately framed it and placed a copy on my bookshelf in my home office, where it had remained for over a decade. Until now.

I swallowed the lump in my throat, blinking back a suspicious stinging in my eyes. I carefully closed the box, making sure nothing heavy was on top to damage anything inside of it.

Then, we left the home that had almost always been mine since moving to Vegas – the same home that had sometimes been yours, when you’d wanted it to be. You’d always kept your apartment, which had always bothered me. I never told you it did, but I was sure you knew. Sometimes, I thought you kept that place just to prove to me that you didn’t belong to me. It had never occurred to me that maybe you had never moved in with me because I’d never asked you to. But there were a lot of things that had never occurred to me until it was too late.

You asked me again once we started driving where we were going, but I honestly had no idea. My only thought at the moment had been to get out of Vegas. I’d stashed away enough cash over the past year to get us one of those extended stay hotel rooms for a little while, in a city and state far, far away. That hadn’t been my intention when I’d started hoarding money in my safe, but I’m glad cashing part of my paycheck each week had seemed like a good idea once I’d noticed the world had started going to shit.

Once you were better, we could head back to Vegas and maybe come up with some justification to get out of town and abandon our obligations to our jobs. Maybe the stress had been too much, maybe we’d had a mental break. They’d have to accept our excuses to get away, they couldn’t afford to lose two capable bodies when everyone else was dropping dead like flies.

I wished I could’ve called my parents before we left, to let them know what we were doing. I had heard from my mother and father a few weeks ago, and as far as I knew they were still alive. I was sure the military would be contacting them sooner rather than later if they hadn’t already, and I hated that they would worry. I just couldn’t risk calling them from the road in case it would give the military some kind of lead on where we were.

You hadn’t heard from your parents or your Papa and Nana Olaf in two months, a fact that surprised me considering how close you were to them. But you were an only child, and with all of your other relatives living in either Minnesota or Norway, there was no one to check on them, and it wasn’t like you could take time off to make sure they were okay.

“It’s all right, G,” I assured you, at your visible distress. I began heading west towards California, watching you worriedly chew on your thumbnail out of the corner of my eye. “We’ll check on them, okay? Make sure they’re all right, and then we’ll head up north. Maybe up to Washington or Montana. Find some place like Wolf Lake and hunker down. Does that sound like a plan?”

We only ended up having enough time to get to the Nevada side of the Nevada/California border before we had to stop for the night. The mandatory curfew issued by the military a few months ago ensured that everyone was inside by sundown; anyone caught outside afterward would be detained and tested on the spot, and there was no way we’d be able to talk our way out of it.

Of course, the motel we’d checked into only had one room left with a double bed. And while it certainly wouldn’t be the first time we’d shared a bed, we hadn’t slept together in over a year and I didn’t want to assume it would be okay with you. I was about to ask when you threw down your overnight bag and dropped heavily onto the bed, laying down on the right side where you’d always slept when we were together. You didn’t even give the sleeping arrangements a second glance.

“Do you want me to get you anything?” I asked, your shoes hitting the floor with two distinct thuds as you toed them off. I turned the light on in the bathroom, grimacing at the dingy tiles and water-stained tub.

“No,” you replied with a sigh, and closed your eyes. “I’m just tired.”

“I’m going to take a shower,” I said, as you sat up and began to unbutton your shirt, your eyes searching the room for something. “What are you looking for?”

“Remote,” you responded, and I paused in the doorway to watch as your shirt fell from your shoulders, sliding down your arms and pooling around your waist to reveal strong, broad shoulders. My eyes followed your spine down to your trim waist, to the two small dimples of defined muscles right above your ass that I always loved to press my thumbs into when I was gripping your hips as I fucked you from behind. Your pale skin glowed in the soft light of the bedside lamp, muscles cording beneath your skin as you leaned forward and reached for the television remote, and I could just make out the scars marring your smooth skin. I itched to trace them with my tongue.

I pulled my eyes up to your face, meeting your gaze as you looked over your shoulder at me. I felt my face heat up as I realized I’d been busted. You ducked your head, smiling shyly as you bit your lip and turned away, and I don’t know how long I stood under the cold water of the shower before I was able to safely come out.

You were watching the television on low volume when I emerged from the bathroom wearing a pair of gym shorts and a tee shirt. The bedcovers were pulled up to your chin, and I couldn’t help but wonder what you were wearing. I cleared my throat as I stood beside the bed, and I’m sure you could sense my hesitation. You rolled your eyes before sitting up and pulling the covers back on my side of the bed, waving your hand as you showcased the mattress with a flourish that would put Bob Barker’s Beauties to shame. I could see you were only wearing a small pair of dark boxer-briefs.

I smiled at you, although I tried not to, and was rewarded with a knowing smirk as I eased myself into bed beside you. I sat up against the headboard, snatching the remote from between us and flipping through channels. I felt a tightening in my chest at the image of us sharing a bed and watching television before going to sleep, just like we used to so long ago. God, how many times had I just sat beside you and done this without realizing how much it meant? How many times did I take for granted that it would always be like this?

It was much more obvious just how sick you were once we were settled in bed, and I wondered if you had been lying when you said you’d only been ill for a few days. You kept coughing into the bed sheets to cover the noise and blowing your nose every five minutes into a roll of toilet paper you’d nabbed from the bathroom, leaving the balled up tissues on the nightstand. It wasn’t like we could just go out and buy cold medicine without raising suspicion, so I only had simple ibuprofen and acetaminophen to offer you, which you gratefully took – both at the same time, and I wasn’t sure if you were supposed to do that, but you were a chemist so I figured you would know better than I. Although I wasn’t sure how much it helped; I could see how uncomfortable you were, arching your back and shifting your position every so often.

After a while, you finally quieted down, and when I looked at you your eyes were closed, lips slightly parted. I idly perused the channels, trying to concentrate on the program descriptions instead of the sounds of your labored breathing beside me. You shifted again, grunting softly, a small line of tension forming between your eyebrows, and I realized I was watching you again instead of the television. I dared to reach out and brush the hair away from your forehead, my fingers finding warm, damp skin; your cheeks were flushed.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked you quietly, my voice barely above a whisper.

“I didn’t want you to worry,” you murmured, because of course you wouldn’t be sleeping. You opened your eyes and looked up at me. “I know how you get.”

I snorted. “Oh, yeah? And how’s that?”

You indicated our entire situation with a sweeping gesture of your hand. Your eyes landed on the television as you did so, and you frowned slightly, squinting at the screen. “What are you watching?”

“ _Strange Sex_ ,” I responded, shifting uncomfortably. I rubbed the nape of my neck. “The description said ‘cougars and their cubs’…I thought it was about animals.”

There was the briefest of pauses before you burst into laughter, which was promptly cut short by a coughing fit. You leaned forward, hacking into the bed sheets, your shoulders still shaking as you fought to laugh and cough at the same time. I sighed, a flush creeping up the back of my neck as I waited for you to compose yourself. It didn’t seem to be happening any time soon.

“Why – ” you began, wiping tears from your eyes. “Why would you want to watch that even if it _was_ about animals?”

“I was curious,” I admitted defensively, shrugging as you turned onto your side, facing your back to me. “I wanted to know what was so strange about it.”

“You’re an idiot, Nick,” you declared without heat. Still laughing.

I rolled my eyes, continuing to watch a television show about older women dating much younger men even though I really had no interest, but I was standing on principle at this point. I felt you pull the covers tighter around yourself, which in turn pulled half of them off of me. I gently rearranged them in an effort not to disturb you, but you only yanked them back on the other side of the bed.

“Quit it,” I urged, this time roughly pulling the blankets back towards me.

“I’m freezing.”

“Do you want me to get you a sweatshirt?” I asked, moving to get up. “There’s some in the truck.”

“No,” you responded quietly, and then murmured so innocently, “It might be nice though if somebody would come over here and warm me up.”

I froze at your loaded suggestion, still hovering between remaining in bed and getting out of it to get you a sweatshirt. I didn’t even think I was breathing. When I didn’t respond immediately, you turned your head to look at me from over your shoulder, the light from the television dancing in your eyes and illuminating the longing and desire in them, coupled with uncertainty and edged with just a little bit of insecurity. You cocked an eyebrow, challenging me.

I didn’t want to give in so easily, but when had I ever been able to deny you?

Very slowly, I slid closer to you. My body was nearly flush to yours, but I wasn’t touching you – not yet. I inhaled the scent of you, my nose close to your hair, my warm breath ghosting across your neck. I felt your body responding to me, your form stiffening right before you shivered ever so slightly.

I traced my fingertips over a collection of scars on your shoulder, trailed them down your arm, barely brushed over the blond hairs there. When my hand reached yours, you laced your fingers with mine and pulled me closer while settling back against me. I closed my eyes and sighed with relief at the feeling of your warm, strong body finally against mine. I wrapped my arm around your waist, my hand still clutched tightly in yours. I carded the fingers of my other hand through your hair, smoothing down the unruly locks and placing a firm kiss to the back of your head. Again and again.

“I got you, G,” I whispered, my voice thick, my eyes burning, my heart breaking. “I swear to God, I got you.”

“I know,” you simply responded, pushing your ass into my groin, eliciting a gasp from my lips. You arched your back into me, guiding my hand down between your legs. You sighed audibly at the contact, the heat of your erection scalding my palm like a hot brand even through the fabric of your underwear. “Nick…”

I hissed as my own erection painfully strained against my gym shorts. I shifted behind you, easing the ache as I adjusted myself, groaning as my hard cock slid with delicious friction against the cleft of your ass.

You turned in my arms, gripping my bicep with one hand, your other snaking down between us and palming my erection. I draped my uppermost leg over yours, hooking our knees and pulling you closer, grinding our groins together, your hand still trapped between us. Frantically, our lips met, the passion between us igniting in a blaze that I was more than willing to allow to consume me.

God, I wanted you, but through the haze of lust I realized that we were ill-prepared for the occasion.

“Wait…” I murmured against your mouth. “We can’t…we can’t do this…”

“Why not?” you asked, pulling back in surprise. I couldn’t take my eyes off of your lips, dark and swollen from our kissing. “Unless…you don’t want me anymore.” You narrowed your eyes in suspicion. “Don’t tell me you’re doing all of this because of some twisted sense of obligation you have towards me. You don’t owe me anything, Nick.”

“No, no,” I hastened to tell you, anything to get you to stop looking at me that way. “We don’t…we don’t have any protection.”

Your expression quickly changed into a mix of shock and disgust. “You’ve been with someone else?”

I regarded you incredulously, wanting to strike you and kiss you at the same time. The former because it had been over a year since you had been mine, and yet you still expected me to remain faithful to you. The latter for the same exact reason. How much time had I wasted too proud to ask you to come back to me? How much time had I wasted when you had been mine all along?

“No,” I assured you.

“Then what’s the problem?”

“Have you?” I asked suddenly.

You glared at me at the implication, opening your mouth quickly to retort, but at the last moment you seemed to change your mind. Instead you smirked, shrugging casually, and said, “When would I have had the time?”

I tried to scowl at you, but only managed to narrow my eyes as I fought to compress a grin. You were such a little shit, all bark and no bite – most of the time to hide your insecurities – which was outrageous because you were the most confident and cocky person I had ever met.

There was no one in the world quite like you.

“You know I love you, right?” I asked, and you smiled brightly at me then, biting your bottom lip, and the fact that after all these years I could still make you blush caused a thrill to run right down my spine and straight to my groin.

“I know,” you replied, inching closer to me, your fingers playing with the collar of my tee shirt in a nervous gesture. You looked down, and when you met my gaze again your eyes were wet and full of apprehension. “You never stopped, right?”

“No, baby,” I assured you, pulling you close into my arms. “I never will.”

I drew you into a languid and tender kiss, relishing the feel of your pliant lips against my own. You skimmed your tongue against my mouth, brushing it against my own for the briefest of moments before pulling my bottom lip between your teeth and tugging gently. Your hands skimmed under my shirt, pushing it up my chest as warm fingers skimmed over my abdomen. Back down, your hands traveled, to my shorts, pushing them down my thighs, and I happily complied, lifting my hips off the bed to allow them to slide fully down my legs. I kicked them off, my mouth still connected to yours as I felt you shifting to remove your own underwear.

You rolled onto your back and pulled me on top of you, our bodies touching skin to skin without any barriers for the first time in over a year. I gasped at the heat of your erection against mine as you grinded your hips slowly up against me in wonderfully agonizing torture. Your legs wrapped around my waist, pulling me closer to you as one hand possessively gripped the nape of my neck, the other snaking around my back, blunt nails digging into my skin as you tried to pull me closer still.

“Nick, please…” you sighed softly against my lips, your voice pleading and breathless. I spit into my hand and reached between us to slick myself up. You spoke again, this time your voice wavering with barely contained emotion. “Please, Nick, show me. Show me how much you love me. I forgot, Nick, I forgot, please, I’m so sorry I forgot, please, Nick, please…”

“Shh…” I soothed you, gripping your hips in my hands and pushing up into you carefully, gently, tenderly. “It’s okay, baby. I’ll remind you. I’ll remind you.”

It had been so long since I had felt anything other than despair and misery, since I hadn’t felt so alone and afraid and helpless. But in that moment, when our bodies connected as close as two people could get, when I felt the solidness and heat of you against me, felt your strong arms wrapped around me and your soft lips against mine, I began to feel something new yet familiar. Something that was blossoming from the dark recess of my heart, pumping through my veins and spreading through me like wildfire. Something I hadn’t felt in so, so long.

I felt hope.

* * *

Shortly after our lovemaking, we’d fallen asleep curled around each other like puppies, but a few hours later I was awoken by an uncomfortable heat at my chest, the front of my tee shirt soaking wet. You must’ve broken into a fever during the night, your skin damp and much too warm, body shivering beneath the covers. I turned you onto your back, brushing wet hair away from your forehead as I reached over you to turn the bedside lamp on. I was surprised when your eyes met mine, and wondered how long you’d been awake.

“Why didn’t you wake me?” I asked you softly.

“I didn’t want to bother you,” you replied simply, shrugging. “You must be tired.”

I offered you a stern glance, rising from the bed and fetching a wet washcloth from the bathroom. I grabbed some fever reducer from the overnight bag and a glass of water, and then returned to you, sitting down at the edge of the bed beside you. I helped you sit up to take the pills and drink some water before gently laying you back down, placing the cool washcloth against the feverish skin of your forehead.

My eyes widened as your face crumpled and tears began spilling from the corners of your eyes. Your sudden distress alarmed me, and I quickly slipped my hands on either side of your face, brushing your tears away with my thumbs. You braceleted my wrists with slender fingers, pushing my hands away and turning away from me.

“What’s wrong?” I asked hastily. “Tell me what’s wrong, Greg.”

“You don’t love me,” you blurted out absurdly, as you began to cry harder.

I sat back, startled. “What?”

“After everything I’ve done to you,” you continued, your breath hitching. “You _can’t_ love me, Nick. I – ”

“Greg, stop it,” I tried gently, but you quickly cut me off.

“No, Nick!” you insisted sharply. “I always left you because I knew you’d wait for me, and you always did, you always did. I said terrible things, I _did_ terrible things, I didn’t mean any of them, I only did it to hurt you because I knew how, and you – you’re still doing all of this for me. You dropped everything, your career, your whole life – you could go to _jail_ if they catch us! I don’t – I don’t understand, Nick, I don’t understand. How can you still love me?”

“We’ve both made mistakes,” I reminded you, slipping my hands on either side of your face, and I wondered how much the fever was affecting your emotional state, because you were never like this. I think I’d seen you cry twice in the time I’d known you. I pulled you nose to nose, forcing you to look into my eyes. “I’ve hurt you too, haven’t I? And you still love me, don’t you?”

You nodded silently, tears continuing to spill onto my fingers, but I could tell you were still unconvinced. I clicked my tongue disapprovingly.

“Come here,” I said, as I turned off the light and shifted back onto the bed, leaning against the headboard and pulling you into my arms and cradling your head against my chest, rocking you gently. I felt a stinging in my own eyes, my voice thickening as I continued. “Remember when I went into that box, and I came out somebody else? You still loved me after that, right?”

You nodded again. I felt your shaking start to subside as you began to calm down.

“Remember when I chased after that suspect with Riley? The guy that jumped out the window and fell in the dumpster and died?” I asked, recalling how angry you had been with me for putting myself in danger when I should have just let him run. My life wasn’t worth whatever amount of money he’d stolen from that convenience store, and he’d been more than willing to shoot me for it. “Remember you didn’t talk to me for five days? But you still loved me, right?”

Another nod, this one slower. I felt your body still against mine, your breathing evening as you drifted into sleep.

“Remember when I went to L.A. with Langston and got demoted for it? You still loved me after that,” I continued. “Remember when I got shot, and then nearly blown up half a dozen times? You still loved me then. And when I quit my job and got really, really drunk, and got arrested and had to spend the night in the drunk tank? You gave Sara the money to bail me out in the morning because you were so mad at me. You still loved me then.”

I felt warm tears hitting my tee shirt, and I knew they weren’t from you. I held you tightly, inhaling the scent of your hair and kissing the top of your head.

“Remember when I let you leave?” I asked the darkness, my voice barely a whisper. “Remember when you threw the house keys at me and walked out, and I let you go? You still loved me then, Greg. You still loved me then. And I still love you.”

* * *

I had woken up early, getting ready while it was still dark and leaving the room to grab us some breakfast as soon as curfew lifted at sunrise.  You were still sleeping when I came back, your soft snores the only sound in the small space. You usually didn’t snore, but the congestion in your nose and chest was causing you to do so, and I frowned in concern not for the first time since last night, hesitating to wake you up.

I sighed as I placed the paper bag of food on the dresser, moving across the room to sit down at the edge of the bed beside you. Gently, I reached out and touched your forehead, pleased when you didn’t feel too warm. I decided to give you a few more minutes, rising from the bed and gathering our things, leaving out a few toiletries so you could shower and brush your teeth.

I grabbed my overnight bag with the intent of putting it in the SUV, and opened the door to step outside when I saw them: a group of armed soldiers exiting a military vehicle in the parking lot, another vehicle pulling up right behind them. My heart hammered in my chest as I quickly stepped back inside the room and slammed the door closed.

The sound startled you awake. You sat up quickly, regarding me with alarm.

“What is it?” you asked breathlessly.

“Military,” I responded in a whisper, as if they could hear me all the way from the parking lot. I peered through the blinds, watching soldiers descending upon the motel like a swarm of bees. _“Fuck.”_

There was a sudden blur of movement as we scrambled around the room, you quickly pulling on some clothes as I hastily packed up the rest of our stuff. I looked surreptitiously through the blinds again, checking to see if there was any way we could slip past them, but not only were there several men meandering through the parking lot, one of their trucks was blocking the only exit to the street.

The motel was shaped in a U with all doors facing the parking lot. I could see soldiers across the way knocking on doors, I could hear their banging only a few rooms away from ours. Men’s commanding voices, demanding to be allowed inside for a mandatory room check. I wondered just then how many people had been trying to escape the same way we had. How many people had just packed away their entire life into their car and left their homes hoping to hide away in a place like this.

Obviously, we weren’t the first.

A woman’s shrill scream penetrated the men’s voices, and I watched as she was roughly led from her room into the back of one of the military vehicles equipped for holding and transporting detainees. There was a boy trailing behind her who appeared to be no older than a teenager, and I wondered if he was her son. They stopped him before he could get into the truck. He was crying as he stood on the pavement, pleading with an impassive young soldier who only pushed the boy aside without a second glance.

“Nick,” you choked out behind me, your voice barely a whisper. I turned to find you sitting on the bed, your posture tense, wet eyes displaying your pure, unadulterated fear. Your fingers gripped the edge of the bed tightly, knuckles white. I sat down beside you quickly, gently uncurling your fingers from the mattress and grasping your hand in mine, staring at the closed blinds as if I could see through them.

Despite the loud banging on the door of the room that must’ve been right next to ours, I could hear your breath coming in short, quick bursts. Could see your chest rising and falling in my periphery, my eyes focused on the door.

“It’s okay,” you said suddenly, and when I looked at you, I could still see the terror in your eyes, but your expression was something akin to acceptance.

My breath caught in my throat and I shook my head, incredulous. “What?”

“It’s okay, Nick,” you assured me again, your voice soothing. You nodded ever so slightly, encouragingly, and gave me the saddest smile I had ever seen.

“No,” I said, as banging on our own door cut sharply through the air.

_“Open the door. This is a mandatory room check. Have your IDs ready.”_

“Open the door.”

“No,” I repeated, more firmly this time. I gripped your hand tightly in mine, shaking my head as I gritted my teeth and blinked away the stinging in my eyes. This wasn’t it. This wasn’t going to be the end. It couldn’t be.

_“Open the door, now! This is not a request!”_

“They’re going to open it anyway.”

“Let them,” I declared recklessly.

Keys in the lock, and then the door slammed open loudly. I quickly released your hand and moved to stand between you and the soldiers at the entrance, as if I could shield you from them, stop them somehow even though they were all carrying assault rifles and various other weaponry.

“Didn’t you hear us?” one of the soldiers asked, a handsome man with dark hair whose nametag read _Rodriguez._ He regarded both of us warily, lips in a tight line. “Why didn’t you open the door?”

“Didn’t want to,” I responded curtly, carefully watching the three other men entering the room. One of them stepped closer to you, his M16 in the low ready position, aimed somewhere at your feet, but the implication was clear. Another moved towards the bathroom, flicking on the light and taking a look inside. The other stayed behind Rodriguez, his expression set like granite.

“IDs,” Rodriguez commanded, holding out an open hand. I reached into my back pocket and fished out my wallet, handing him my driver’s license. You did the same, extending yours to the soldier standing beside you, who handed it to Rodriguez. He glanced quickly at my ID and quirked an eyebrow, his gaze shifting between the two of us. “Local boys. What are you doing out here?”

My mind was racing for any excuse for us to be an hour outside of Las Vegas in some seedy motel when both of us lived in in the city. I opened my mouth, attempting to force words out of my throat but unable to produce anything that would sound remotely credible.

“He’s married,” you blurted out, and suddenly there were four pairs of eyes on you, including mine, which were wide with disbelief. You rubbed the nape of your neck, appearing sheepish as you looked up at Rodriguez from beneath dark eyelashes, smiling coyly, and I never realized how much of a sucker I’d been before to fall for that innocent look until right now.

Rodriguez turned back to me, handing me my ID with narrowed eyes. “Where’s your ring?”

“He doesn’t like it when I wear it,” I hastily replied, stealing a glance at you out of the corner of my eye, but you were watching the soldier beside you as he moved with interest towards the nightstand on the side of the bed you were sitting on. The glass of water was still standing there half full, surrounded by a thick ring of condensation. Also surrounded by wads of toilet paper that had been used as makeshift tissues, a bottle of fever reducer and a washcloth. Your eyes met his only briefly before he turned his gaze to Rodriguez.

“Sir,” the soldier said, indicating the nightstand with a nod.

“Hold out your hand,” Rodriguez barked at me, and then to you, “You too.”

The soldier standing behind Rodriguez stepped forward, producing a handheld medical device used for H3N2 spot testing in the field. One hundred percent accurate. My stomach dropped to my knees as you extended your hand out towards him. I stepped in front of him first, holding my hand out in an attempt to buy time, but in reality I was only delaying the inevitable.

The soldier gripped my wrist and I flinched as the device pricked my finger, a strip absorbing a drop of my blood before he released me. I waited as the machine whirred softly, only seconds passing before it beeped. He looked up at Rodriguez.

“Negative.”

Rodriguez nodded towards you, his expression almost challenging. You held out your hand, which the large soldier took easily. Pressed the device to your finger and –

“Wait!” I exclaimed, stepping forward quickly and realizing my mistake when I felt arms grabbing me from behind and shoving me face first into the wall. I felt the breath escape my lungs, the shock of the blow temporarily stunning me.

_“Positive.”_

“Nick!” you shouted, as I regained my bearings and began to struggle. The soldier gripped one of my hands tightly, curling my wrist painfully in a grappling hold I’d used hundreds of times before on resisting suspects. “Stop it! You’re going to hurt yourself!”

“Listen to your boyfriend,” the soldier hissed in my ear, heightening my anger. I kicked at his ankle, managing to knock him off balance. I elbowed him in the gut and pushed him off of me, but the stone-faced soldier that had been holding the device was now in front of me, grabbing my shoulders and pushing me back into the wall again, knocking my head against the cheap plaster hard enough to make me see stars.

“Nick!” you yelled again, and now the soldier that had been standing beside you was grabbing your arm and lifting you roughly into a standing position. You barely glanced at him, instead focusing worriedly on me. “Nick, it’s all right! It’s okay!”

“No!” I screamed, struggling against the two soldiers holding me back bodily as you were pushed face first into the mattress. Your eyes stayed on me as zip ties were placed on your wrists and pulled tight. “He’s not sick! He’s not sick, he’s not sick, don’t take him, he’s not sick!”

“He tested positive,” Rodriguez stated, his face displaying his disgust as he spared you a quick glance. “He’s coming with us, and if you don’t calm the fuck down you’ll be heading straight to lockup.”

You were hoisted up once more, gracelessly tripping over your feet as you were forcefully ushered towards the door. They were taking you away. They were taking you away from me, and I’d never see you again. No one would ever see you again. I’d promised you, I’d promised you I’d keep you safe, and they were taking you away.

“Greg!” I cried, a kind of terror gripping my heart that I had never felt before. “You can’t take him! Please, don’t take him!”

“Nick,” you said, your voice eerily calm, cutting through my haze of hysteria. I paused as you gave me one last look, and I will never forget as long as I live that you smiled at me – you _smiled_ , reassuring and comforting and so fucking sincere, and I could have never loved you more than I did right in that moment. “Remember Wolf Lake, Nick. I’ll always be at Wolf Lake.”

“No!” I screamed, jerking my body forward in an attempt to break free, pushing and hitting and kicking and anything I could do to get to you. Continued to fight and scream and plead as they shoved me into the floor, as they pushed and hit and kicked in return, and I saw your back as they led you away before I felt a sharp pain at the back of my head, and then I saw nothing.

* * *

 

End Part One. To be continued in Part Two.


	11. July 6, 2014

**TWO**

* * *

_“Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.”_

_\-- Carl Sagan_

* * *

Liberty Times (a Patriot Group publication), Las Vegas Edition, July 6, 2014: _“Yesterday, local military conducted SWAT-style raids on any hotels and motels, searching for Positives and arresting any citizens found to be harboring or assisting Positives. Positives were taken to several various quarantines, all of which are overcrowded, understaffed, and rife with unsanitary and unsafe conditions. Those looking to contact their loved ones in quarantine are advised to call a hotline, even though most cannot be located due to negligent military procedures.”_

* * *

_“I got something!” you exclaimed, jumping up and down on the dock like an excited little boy. You gripped the fishing pole tightly, your smile bright and dazzling in the sunshine. “Nick! Nicky, something’s biting!”_

_“Well, don’t just stand there!” I shouted back at you from the other end of the dock, your smile infectious as I felt the corners of my mouth rising. “Reel it in!”_

_“Oh!” Your laugh was light and laced with embarrassment. For a moment you fought with your reel, fumbling with the complicated mechanism. I had warned you not to buy it, to get a simpler one, but you’d insisted that a degree in chemistry from Stanford spoke for itself and you were therefore perfectly capable of figuring out how to use a reel, no matter how advanced of a model it was. “I don’t know how! Help me!”_

_“All right, all right,” I sighed, putting my rod down carefully before jogging over to you. I took the rod out of your hands and expertly began working the reel. You crouched forward, hands on your knees as you anxiously watched the water._

_“It’s huge! What is it?” you asked eagerly, as I reeled the fish closer to the surface of the water. It didn’t actually look that big to me. “Maybe it’s a shark!”_

_My eyes briefly drifted over the lake. “I doubt it’s a shark, Greg.”_

_“Maybe it’s an alligator,” you mused, squinting up at me against the sun with one eye closed. “You know? Like on that TV show?”_

_“I’m pretty sure it’s a catfish.”_

_“Oh, man, if it’s an alligator we’ll need a gun. Do you have a gun in the truck?”_

_“I wouldn’t worry about it. It’s definitely a catfish,” I told you, as I finally pulled the fish out of the water. I didn’t much like catfish, and was pretty disappointed we hadn’t nabbed a bass._

_The fact that it was a catfish did nothing to extinguish your enthusiasm. You snatched the rod out of my hands, proudly admiring your catch. Turned back to me with a beatific smile. “See? Told you I could fish. Now you just have to teach me to hunt.”_

***

When I woke up, I was inside of a holding cell with about twenty other people. I was propped up in the corner, one of my wrists cuffed to a pipe installed into the wall for that specific purpose. My head felt like it’d been split in two until a mad scientist had decided to haphazardly put it back together. Tentatively, I brushed my fingers over the back of my skull, tracing over a large and tender lump. I was still dizzy, blinking hard against the harsh lights of the room as I fought not to vomit.

Instinctively, I looked for you, but of course you weren’t there. I wondered where you were, what was happening to you, if I’d be able to find you. I had been inside of a quarantine hospital only once while collecting evidence after one patient had murdered another. There had been so many people there, some patients didn’t even have a room assigned to them or a bed to sleep in, instead loitering in hallways and sleeping on floors. One man that had died from the flu had been placed on a cot in the hallway before I arrived, and he remained there for the entire four hours I spent at the scene, was still there when I left. The hospital was so understaffed and overwhelmed, no one had the time to take him downstairs to the morgue. They didn’t even give him a second glance, just walked by as if he wasn’t even there.

What I remembered the most about that scene was the fact that the victim had been murdered over a sandwich. Speaking to some of the patients, I’d learned that there wasn’t enough food to go around, and that the man who had committed the murder hadn’t eaten in three days. Survival of the fittest at its most basic level.

I hated imagining you in a place like that. Because despite spending ten years as a CSI investigating murders and kidnappings and rapes and child molestations, despite getting beat up in an alley and left for dead, despite getting publicly and humiliatingly run through the ringer for running down a boy who was trying to kill you, despite that burlesque dancer taking advantage of you…despite _everything_ , you still believed that the best of people were hidden up their sleeves. I still remembered what Sara said you told her when she had asked if you ever thought you’d had enough of doing what we do every day. You looked at her with that mischievous glint in your eye and a disarming smile – _“I’m just getting started.”_

You were too trusting, too giving, too hopeful. Too naïve. You wouldn’t survive there.

I tried to hold on to hope. I tried to hold on to the image of your smile – to the hopeful, reassuring smile you’d given me as they took you away. I tried to hold on to the feeling of you in my arms last night, to that one perfect moment when I felt like we could do anything as long as we did it together.

But my mind kept drifting back to the look of terror in your eyes as you sat on the bed in the motel room listening to the loud banging of the soldiers’ knocking on doors. I couldn’t help imagining that same look as someone beat you with an IV pole until you stopped breathing because he wanted your food. I couldn’t help imagining your dead body lying on a cot for hours as people meandered by without giving you a second glance.

I wasn’t sure how long I sat there listening to the sounds of the jail around me – harsh buzzing from automatic doors opening and closing, sparse conversation between cellmates, the occasional command from an officer or soldier entering and leaving with and without detainees – before someone called my name.

“Stokes,” a uniformed officer said from the doorway. He gestured for me to step forward with a bored expression that quickly turned to annoyance when I indicated my cuffed wrist. Rolling his eyes, he crossed the room to release me before sharply turning on his heel and leading me out of the pen. Numbly, I followed him down a hallway and into a large room with rows of chairs filled with people waiting to be processed. He led me to a counter, speaking to the woman behind it as my eyes traveled over the room, still looking for you even though I knew you wouldn’t be there.

Before I really understood what was happening, a ziploc bag was unceremoniously dropped onto the counter, the woman behind it shoving a pen and clipboard into my hands. “Please sign.”

I looked up, confused. “For what?”

“That all your stuff is there,” she responded with exasperation, as if it should have been obvious. She unzipped the bag and dumped my wallet, watch, ring and keys onto the counter.  “You can pick up your car from the impound. The receipt for that is there too, and an inventory for everything in it.”

“I’m being released?” I asked dubiously, absently scribbling my name on the form. She pushed my personal items forward, nearly pushing them off the counter before I hastily grabbed them, along with my copies of the paperwork.

“CSI Stokes is right,” she deadpanned, and dismissed me with a wave of her hand. I quickly moved aside as she indicated for the next person to step forward. It didn’t occur to me to wonder how she knew I was a CSI while I hurried to catch up to the officer who had originally led me out of the holding cell. He was impatiently waiting for me at the security doors, punching in a code and pushing the door open as soon as I was close. He took my elbow and practically shoved me outside, about to close the door in my face when I braced my hand against it.

“I don’t understand,” I stated, shaking my head.

“Ask her,” he responded, pointing over my shoulder, and as soon as I turned to look the door slammed behind me.

Sara was leaning against the fence, hands in her coat pockets. As our eyes met, she immediately pushed herself forward, stopping abruptly as we stood three feet apart, almost hesitant. She opened her mouth once, twice, before finally speaking.

“We have to stop meeting like this,” she stated, referring to the first time she’d bailed me out of jail, after I’d quit my job and gotten into a fistfight with a couple of cops outside of a liquor store while shitfaced. She tried to smile – forced – the same smile she used when trying not to vomit at a crime scene, insisting it curbed the gag reflex.

“Sara,” I choked out, my breath catching in my chest. I could see the silent question in her eyes, wondering where you were, hoping that her fears weren’t true. I only shook my head, the emotion I’d been holding in for hours suddenly bubbling up and boiling over. Quickly, she stepped closer and pulled me into an embrace, holding me tightly as I wept unabashedly into her shoulder.

“I tried, Sara,” I cried, as my body was wracked with sobs. “I tried, I swear I tried, but they took him. I promised him I’d keep him safe, and they took him, Sara, they took him, they took him.”

“It’s okay,” she soothed, but her voice was rough with emotion. I could feel her slender fingers clutching the back of my shirt. “As soon as we get back to Vegas, we’ll start looking. We’ll find him, Nick. We’ll find him.”

* * *

To be continued...


	12. August 14, 2014

* * *

USA Today, August 14, 2014:  _“The military wishes to remind all citizens searching for loved ones in quarantine to remain patient while they process an overwhelming influx of patients. Please do not contact the hotline more than once a day, as operators are currently flooded with phone calls, and do not panic if your loved one cannot be reached immediately; he or she is awaiting processing and will be located shortly.”_

* * *

“Damn it!” Sara exclaimed, as she slammed the phone down in the break room. She took her pen and crossed a line through a location and phone number in her battered spiral-bound notebook before continuing to scribble angrily back and forth over and over again until I could hear the page ripping. She threw her pen across the room, shoved the notebook away and folded her arms across the table before dropping her face onto her arms and groaning with frustration.

“Sara,” I began cautiously, leaning back in my chair. I sighed heavily as I ran my hand down my face, fingers brushing over my beard that hadn’t been trimmed in God knew how long. “We’ve been calling for over a month.”

“Forty days,” she specified, peeking up at me, her voice muffled by her shirt sleeves.

Forty days. It had been forty days since they had taken you. Since I had hastily pulled you from the lab and foolishly insisted that I could keep you safe if we got out of there, got anywhere but Vegas, as if the virus and the military and quarantines didn’t exist outside of Sin City. Forty days since I had returned to our house without you, to see your car in my driveway and the front door kicked in, the wooden frame shattered just like my fantasy of you and I running off together and hiding out in some place like Wolf Lake, living out our happily ever after. God, what a joke. What an idiot I was, to think I could protect you.

And now, after the fact, of course it was easy to see how many things I could have done differently to save your life. If I had woken up earlier, if I had skipped getting breakfast, if I had been paying attention and noticed you were sick, hadn’t let my pride get in the way of asking you to come back to me, if I hadn’t let you walk away from me in the first place.

Forty days. Forty days of phone calls to that stupid quarantine hotline, forty days of calling each individual quarantine in Nevada and surrounding states. Forty days, each getting harder than the one before to believe that you were still out there somewhere and not lying in a mass grave, your body disintegrating into ash and bone fragments as it burned without anyone wondering if someone would miss you or if anyone had ever loved you or if you even had a name.

“Oh, my God,” Sara blurted out then, lifting her head from her arms and gaping at me. “You’re giving up.”

I took a deep breath, pursing my lips for a moment as I tried to form the words. I cast my eyes to the table, clutching a pen and doodling a continuous circle on my steno pad. Finally, I cleared my throat, speaking quietly. “I’m not giving up. I just don’t know how many more times we’re going to make the same phone call and get the same answer.”

“Until we get a different answer,” she stated, regarding me dubiously. “Until we find him.”

As if it was that simple. I shook my head, scoffing at the implication. “The longer we sit here making phone calls, the longer we’re deluding ourselves.”

“So what do you suggest?” she asked, holding her hands out in a pleading gesture. She scowled at me, jaw clenched, lips in a tight line. “Do you want us to knock on the front door of every quarantine in the state of Nevada? In California? Utah? And if they even let us in – which they won’t – do you think we’ll be able to find him amongst the thousands of patients they have in each one? Is that what you want? Or maybe we should build a time machine, and _then_ we can – ”

“God damn it, Sara!” I exclaimed, standing up so quickly my chair nearly toppled over behind me. “You think I don’t want to find him? You think – ”

“I think you’re giving up!”

“Call it what you want!” I yelled, grabbing my steno pad and throwing it across the room, watching the pages flutter like a bird’s wings as it soared through the air before crashing to the floor in a heap.

“Call it what _you_ want, Nick!” Sara spat back, standing up herself and pointing at me, her face contorted in anger. “But I know one thing: if one of us was out there, and Greg was here, he wouldn’t give up on us. He _didn’t_. He didn’t give up when you were in that box or when I was under that car, so I’m not going to give up on him.”

We stood toe to toe, jaws clenched, breathing hard. I felt heat creeping up the back of my neck, spreading to my cheeks and ears as shame overtook me. Sara was right. You had never given up on us, and here I was ready to throw in the towel because I couldn’t handle hearing another operator tell me they had no record of you. I collapsed back into my chair, raking my fingers through my hair before burying my face in my hands and inhaling sharply.

“Fuck,” I breathed, hot tears escaping my eyes as I wondered if you were scared and alone and hungry. Wondered if you were hoping that someone was still looking for you, if that hope was the only thing that was keeping you hanging on when all you could see was a green light, when all you could feel was the sting of bites all over your body and the press of cool metal against your chin.

“It’s all right,” Sara soothed from beside me, her hand rubbing comforting circles on my back. “I know it’s hard, Nick. I know, but it’ll be all right. It’s only been forty days.”

Forty days. A lot could happen in that amount of time. A puffin could lay an egg and create another puffin. A cicada could shed its skin and die. A man could resist temptation in the desert from the devil and live to tell about it. The world could end and start again as a different man struggled to survive a great flood in a boat with his family. Another man could be taken to quarantine, die from the virus, from starvation, from unsanitary conditions, from being beaten to death over a fucking sandwich.

Sara knew that as much as I did. But she was right. You hadn’t given up on us at the eleventh hour, we at least owed it to you to do the same.

* * *

 

To be continued...


	13. September 28, 2014

* * *

Liberty Times (a Patriot Group publication), Las Vegas Edition, September 28, 2014:  _“The military continues to use our once-reputable periodicals to spread their propaganda. Don’t believe what you hear about a cure or the virus slowing down or that quarantine is working. The virus has gained momentum and is spreading faster than ever. Tension is reaching critical mass, and we must prepare ourselves for war. The battle for survival is near.”_

* * *

Between the constant rioting in the streets and violent crime at an ultimate high, it was getting more and more dangerous to leave the protective custody of the military. Homes were no longer safe havens, survivors breaking in for food, for provisions, for shelter, for much more sinister intentions. The scarce employees remaining at the Crime Lab had taken up residence in empty offices or on call rooms, including myself. It wasn’t much better in here; theft was running rampant with supplies such as food and toiletries running low, but at least my chances of eating everyday were better than those stuck outside.

Not that I really had a choice to go back home anyway; my house had been one of dozens destroyed by fires in my neighborhood. And I probably should have been more upset. But as I watched the home we once shared burn to the ground on the news – the one you would never return to again, and now, neither would I – I felt an odd sense of satisfaction. I was glad to rid myself of just one of many constant reminders of you – of your absence and of my failure to keep you safe.

And while you may not have lived there for over a year before they took you, I would always think of it as our home. You were everywhere: in the paint colors of our bedroom that you’d picked out, in the dark stain on the bathroom sink where you’d splattered hair dye, in the burn on the living room carpet when we’d attempted to play with candlewax during one of our more adventurous sexual exploits that resulted in us nearly burning the entire house down, in the vast expanse of the empty mattress beside me as I lay down to sleep.

Mostly everyone had to share a room here, but I’d managed to maintain my own space in an old storage closet. It wasn’t much, just a sleeping bag, a desk lamp, and some personal items like my clothes, shoes, toiletries. It was small, but it was mine, mostly thanks to the deadbolt I’d installed on the door. I’d gotten it out of storage, evidence from an old case that I was sure didn’t matter anymore, because nothing really did.

I only wished I would have been able to take some of those mementos you had packed away so carefully in that box when we’d attempted to run. At least I had our picture from our first date; I had removed it from the frame after coming home from lockup and carefully folded it, placing it in my wallet. It was the only thing I had left of us, and I looked at it every spare chance I got. In between picking up bodies and spot testing for the virus and tracking down Patriot Group members, it was my talisman, my beacon of hope, the only source of my light in life when everything else was so dark.

We still tried in vain to find you at every quarantine in Nevada and surrounding states, eventually moving on to include quarantines located two or three states over. Sara and I called every day in between cases or running evidence, on the way to and from scenes, on the rare chances we had a break to eat. The 24-hour hotline began closing at 5pm every business day and on weekends, with more and more private lines to individual quarantines disconnected every day.

Quarantines were shutting down all over the country, overrun with disease and no one to minister to the sick. The idea of removing so-called “Positives” from the general population had long been abandoned. Doctors and nurses and soldiers dying with the rest of them, entire buildings condemned without anyone even bothering to retrieve the bodies and ensure identification or a proper burial. It was the same for private homes, apartment buildings, hotels, motels. There simply wasn’t enough manpower left in the population to keep up with the flow of death.

I don’t know why Sara and I continued to work. Habit, I guess, and to forget the fact that we were now alone. Grissom left as quietly and swiftly as he’d arrived. He’d been called to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, on account of his reputation as a scientist. They had asked him to assist in finding a cure or a way to deter the virus – anything to help stop what surely was fast becoming the end of the human race, and he’d just…left. Just like that.

I don’t know why Sara stayed behind. I hoped she hadn’t stayed for me, but I was too afraid to ask. I could see the tension in her face, her lips in a tight line, the tiny pronounced wrinkle in between her eyebrows and the set of her jaw. I didn’t want to be responsible for her current misery, and maybe she might’ve had a better chance at survival in Georgia. Maybe she would’ve had a nicer place to live than sharing an on call room with five other people.

At the same time, I was glad she didn’t go. I wasn’t sure if I would’ve been able to hang on knowing that I was really, truly alone. It was bad enough at night in that storage closet with nothing but your picture and my own thoughts to torment me. Sometimes it felt smaller than that glass box I’d been buried in. And sometimes…sometimes…I’d close my eyes tight and press that gun under my chin and imagine green lights and stifling hot air and the only thing that would keep me from pulling the trigger was the same thing that kept me from pulling the trigger all those years ago: You.

Unfortunately, not everyone had something to keep them hanging on.

I traversed the hallways of the lab, making my way to the office I’d been summoned and passing Brass’ old office in the process. It had long ago been cleared of all of his personal items, replaced with a military captain’s awards and plaques and pictures of his family. The captain was dead now too, but no one had seemed to replace him yet. I doubt anyone would.

I found him sitting in his office, the gold badge on his chest glinting in the afternoon sun peeking in through the blinds. Sherriff Ecklie was slumped low in his chair, hands hidden beneath a desk littered with tissues and empty water bottles, fever reducers, pain relievers, and various prescription medications. His eyes were closed, skin pale, hair damp with sweat that beaded down his face and soaked through his white dress shirt. He’d been sick for a while, along with most everyone else in this place, in this city, in this world.

The idea of quarantine had long been abandoned. The idea of any kind of solution. The idea of any kind of hope.

“You wanted to see me?” I asked presently, clenching my jaw as I fought the urge to vomit at the overwhelming stench of death and stale air. Air conditioning had gone out months ago, emergency generators handling the barest of necessary amenities. I longingly eyed the closed windows, wondering when the last time was that he’d opened them.

Slowly, Ecklie opened his eyes, bloodshot and glassy as they tried unsuccessfully to focus on me. His head lolled back against the high back of his black leather chair, his lips twisting in what I assumed was meant to be a smile but the blood on his teeth ruined the effect. My eyes widened at how terrifying it actually appeared.

“Nick,” he greeted me, his voice hoarse. He swallowed audibly, bringing his head up and breathing hard from the effort. He indicated the guest chair in front of his desk with a nod. “Have a seat.”

Cautiously, I moved closer to the chair, gripping the back of it with both hands and leaning forward. I didn’t sit. I didn’t want to give the impression that I wanted to stay.

I cleared my throat. “Conrad.”

“You remember Morgan, don’t you?” he asked apropos of nothing, and sniffled loudly. He brought one hand up from his lap, revealing a picture frame containing Morgan’s bright, smiling face. She was wearing a black cap and gown, a diploma clutched tightly in her hands, a woman I assumed to be her mother standing beside her with watery eyes and a smile just as big as her daughter’s. “My daughter, remember her?”

“Yeah, I remember her.”

“Did I ever tell you about the day she was born?”

I blinked, shifting uncomfortably. “Uh…no, sir.”

“Wish I could,” he stated, and smiled again, bitterly this time. “But I wasn’t there. I was out on shift, working a high profile case. All hands on deck. Couldn’t… _wouldn’t_ leave. I always put the job first. Always. Above my health. Above my family. Above loyalties to coworkers and people who thought they were my friends. Above…above the birth of my only daughter.”

He jerked forward in his chair, nearly doubling over as he coughed and hacked into the crook of his elbow. I hesitated between moving to him to make sure he was all right and standing where I was, but he was soon calm and leaned back again, blood staining the sleeve of his jacket. He licked his lips, his tongue smearing ruby red across his mouth but he didn’t seem to notice.

“Her mother and I had gotten into a fight that day,” he went on, after a few moments of catching his breath. “She kept calling at work and I thought it was because of the fight. I didn’t know it was because she went into labor. Morgan wasn’t due for another month. So I ignored her, just to be a prick. Didn’t find out my daughter was born until the next day when I came home to an empty house and about a hundred messages on my answering machine.

“When she told me…when her mother told me she was pregnant, the only thing I could think about was how a baby was going to interfere with my career. Jenny wasn’t even supposed to be able to get pregnant, and yet there she was…this beautiful little baby girl. Morgan. Morgan Ecklie.” He laughed, a wet, sickening sound that made my gut churn uneasily. “No, not Morgan Ecklie. Morgan Brody, thanks to me.”

“Conrad, what is this about?” I asked quietly, my knuckles white as I grasped the chair hard.

“How long have you been here, Nick?”

“About seventeen years.”

“Thirty-seven years this October,” he informed me, and smiled that same, bloody death grin. _Risus sardonicus_ was what they called it in the morgue, when a sustained spasm of the facial muscles produced the appearance of grinning on a corpse. I swallowed the bitter taste of bile in the back of my throat. “CSI Level 3, right?”

I nodded silently.

“Is this what you thought you’d still be doing? Say, ten years ago? Five? Or did you hope for something else?” He indicated his desk, his office, with a sweeping gesture of his hand, still gripping the picture of his daughter. “Did you hope for this?”

Ecklie was the most successful man I knew. Wealthy, career-driven, politically savvy, friends with all the right people. Everything I had always wanted for myself, everything I had pictured ten, twenty years from now. And yet here he was at the end of his life, sitting alone in his empty office at a desk I’d always fantasized myself behind. No wife, no children, no real friends. Just a job and a car and an empty house and a big shiny gold badge.

He was pathetic.

He was me.

“You almost had it, didn’t you?” he continued, his voice breaking with a wheeze. “Assistant supervisor? Bet that felt good, you really deserved it after dedicating so many years of your life to this place. After they said no to your ransom. You deserved it, didn’t you? But this place took it away from you. Just like it takes everything else. Daughters, wives, friends…what was his name? The…your friend. What was his name?”

“Which one?” I asked, frowning. I had lost lots of friends over the past years, especially in the last few months, and with Ecklie’s erratic mental status, he could have been talking about anyone.

“Your friend,” he pressed, waving the picture frame in his hand for emphasis. “The one…the one that got beat up in that alley. The one that blew up, his CDs melted to the ceiling. What was…what was his name? He was your friend, wasn’t he? He was more than your friend.”

I swallowed hard. You and I had never disclosed our relationship to anyone except Warrick and Sara, but it wasn’t a surprise to me that he might’ve known. We had been especially mum after the fallout from Sara and Grissom’s secret affair, but I’m sure Ecklie had been paying much closer attention to his employees and their interpersonal relationships after that HR nightmare, watching carefully and ready to step in at a moment’s notice.

“Greg,” I finally responded.

“Yeah, Greg. San…” he trailed off, searching for the last name he couldn’t recall. “Greg San…”

“Sanders,” I finished for him, my voice barely a whisper.

“Yeah, Sanders. Took him too, didn’t it?” He shook his head ruefully. “Before the military took him, this place took him, didn’t it?”

I opened my mouth to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. I could only remember all the nights you’d asked me to spend time with you and I’d recklessly denied you my attention, because there was always tomorrow and I had my career to think about _now_. All the nights I’d missed watching a _House, M.D._ marathon on the couch with you because I hated that show and had too much paperwork to catch up on. All the nights I’d made plans to go out to some bar with you and your friends only to volunteer to work because your friends were too loud and I hated gay bars. All the nights you went to bed and looked at me with those bedroom eyes, asking in a suggestive whisper how late I was going to stay up and all I could tell you was not to wait up for me because I was researching for a case.

“Because this place is more important, isn’t it?” Ecklie asked, nodding knowingly. I shook my head quickly, his visage blurring through the stinging in my eyes. My breath started coming faster, my heart beating rapidly in my chest. The large office I’d always envied was suddenly seeming as small as that glass box I’d been buried in, and just as suffocating. “Of course it is. That’s why it’s just me and you here, Nick. And now it’s just you.”

I saw the flash of metal too late, his other hand that had been resting on his lap and hidden beneath the desk.

_“No!”_ I screamed, reaching forward as he slid the muzzle of his gun into his mouth and pulled the trigger. I closed my eyes tightly as the shot resounded through the air, echoing off of the walls and ringing in my ears. I didn’t even hear the dull thud as his body slid down the chair and to the floor, leaving a trail of blood and bones and brain matter in its wake.

* * *

To be continued...

 


	14. November 28, 2014

* * *

Liberty Times Fliers (a Patriot Group), Las Vegas, November 28, 2014:  _“THE END IS HERE. LEAVE THE CITIES WHILE YOU STILL CAN. JOIN THE RESISTANCE SURVIVORS CAMP. WE CAN WORK TOGETHER TO ENSURE SAFETY AND SURVIVAL.”_

* * *

To believe we were safer in the Crime Lab – a government building filled with police employees and military personnel – should have been a reasonable assumption. It was the wrong assumption, however, and in hindsight we should have known, but after you were taken and Grissom left, Sara and I got a little distracted when we should have been paying closer attention.

There were only a few of us left now in the lab, no more reinforcements arriving, no more new hires or volunteers. Sara and I probably should have left the city when everyone else did, but it was a new world out there, unfamiliar and unforgiving. There were no more laws, no more rules, and while there still should have been some kind of moral compass within each one of us – some kind of instinctive distinction between right and wrong – no one seemed to recollect it. And we were firsthand witnesses of the destruction and utter disregard for human life, the bodies in the morgue and the streets and the front steps of the Crime Lab were evidence of it. They all hadn’t died from the virus.

While it might have been suffocating in here, stuck day in and day out in the same damn place, at the same time it was comforting knowing at least I had somewhere to go, something familiar in a world that had drastically changed from the one I once knew. It might have been tempting to leave, to break free of the same four walls and escape into the great, big world, but there was no guarantee of survival out there, no food rations or provisions or protection in the form of military fatigues and M16s.

There was a part of me too, deep down inside the most unreachable part of me, that worried if I left, you wouldn’t be able to find me. No phones, no internet, I didn’t even have a house anymore and your apartment complex existed in a part of town that was now labeled a dangerous warzone. This Crime Lab was the last link we had left. If you managed to survive and escape quarantine, to make your way back to Las Vegas…it broke my heart to imagine you thinking I was dead or – worse – had given up on you, abandoned you.

I didn’t have much to offer you anymore. As I slowly awoke from another restless night’s sleep, I glanced at the four walls surrounding me, at the upside down milk crate that held my toothbrush, comb, watch. In the corner was my backpack with a couple changes of clothes. I ran my hand over the sleeping bag, imagining having to share it with you. I’d never liked to cuddle, had often pushed you away when you’d wrapped around me like an octopus in the middle of the night; it always felt like you were smothering me with the insane heat you emanated. I scoffed bitterly, shaking my head. Now, I’d give anything to feel too hot and sticky against your skin in that tiny sleeping bag.

I sighed as I roughly rubbed my jaw, my beard scratching against my palm. I supposed I should probably wash up and see if I could find something to eat, but it was getting harder and harder to get up each morning when there was fast becoming no reasons left to. I didn’t work anymore, just mostly wandered aimlessly through the Crime Lab. Sometimes I’d read, sometimes I’d help out the soldiers with daily chores like laundry or preparing meals. Sometimes I’d even go through old evidence, try to piece together unsolved puzzles long forgotten. I’d even solved one cold case, much to Sara’s amusement. And even though the victim’s family would never know, even though the killer would never be brought to justice (even if he was still alive), the smile on Sara’s face when I’d shown her my new findings – the first genuine smile I’d seen her offer in months – was worth it.

I hadn’t seen her in a few days, but then again, I hadn’t really made an attempt to leave this tiny room and be sociable. Finally, I dragged myself out of my so-called bed, donning a sweater before pulling on my boots. I let out a yawn that shook my frame, rolling my shoulders in an attempt to loosen up my neck and back. Sleeping in a sleeping bag on the floor of an old storage room was really wreaking havoc on my back. I placed my hand on the doorknob, slipping my other hand into my jeans’ pocket, making sure to feel the familiar fold of a worn photograph before stepping outside.

I locked the door behind me, sniffing harshly against the stink of sweat and dust and stale air. At least the cooler weather meant we could open some windows and air out the place. Slowly, I made my way to the men’s room, wondering if there would be any hot water today. Maybe I could even find a razor and –

Two shots resounded like a crack of lightening, startling me out of my reverie. Instinctively, I crouched down against the wall of the hallway and drew my service pistol. My heart hammered in my chest, breathing coming in short, quick bursts – the only sounds I could hear for a few seconds before another series of gunshots rang out.

I remained still, glancing back and forth rapidly in an attempt to figure out where it had come from. The halls were empty, deafening silence ringing in my ears. I heard footsteps and turned quickly, sweeping my arms up and gripping my gun tightly as I braced myself and prepared to fire.

Two soldiers came creeping around the corner where the hallways intersected, guns drawn. I raised my hands but didn’t drop my gun, instead shook my head and gave the tactical signal for shots heard. They shared a glance between each other before one nodded at me and indicated for me to continue forward, and then both of them continued down the hallway in the other direction.

I let out a deep breath and rolled my shoulders, mentally preparing myself as I continued to make my way down the hall with anticipation, unsure of what to expect as I came up on a corner. Whatever I could have imagined, it would have never been this.

She was crouched up against the wall in the hallway opposite a storage closet, her knees pulled up to her chest, hands hidden in her lap. She was covered in blood. On her face, her shirt, jacket. It was in her hair, on her mouth, then her tongue as she absently licked away stray droplets from her lips. I ran to her, sliding into a kneeling position in front of her as I holstered my gun.

“Sara,” I breathed, my voice strained. One of her eyes was swollen, her cheek red and puffy; someone had slapped her – hard. Years of investigating drew my eyes right to the smaller details. Her shirt was buttoned incorrectly, two of them missing, tiny threads hanging where little clear buttons should have been. Her jeans were torn at the knee, a red scrape against pale skin peeking through the fabric. She didn’t meet my eye, her expression blank, gaze fixed over my shoulder. “Sara, what happened?”

“Nothing happened,” she murmured. Quickly, I looked around, but no one was within sight, and I couldn’t see any immediate signs of a struggle in the hallway; nothing disturbed, no blood on the walls or floor.

“Are you hurt?” I asked, refocusing on her as I tentatively placed one hand on her uninjured knee, the other on her shoulder.

“No.”

“Sara, you’re covered in blood,” I informed her quietly.

“I am?” she asked, her brow furrowing slightly, but she still didn’t meet my eye. She raised her hands, revealing her Glock 17, held it casually as she wiped the blood from her face and neck.

“Sara,” I tried again, gently easing the gun out of her hand. I placed it in the waistband of my jeans at my lower back, covering it with my shirt. I cast another glance down the hall, but we were still alone. “Sara, did you shoot someone?”

She didn’t answer me, but her stare shifted slightly. I followed her gaze, turning to see the storage closet behind me. There was blood on the doorknob. I kept one eye on her and the other on the door as I stood slowly. Hesitantly, I placed my hand on the knob, gripping it tightly as I withdrew my gun from its holster once more. One deep breath and I opened the door quickly, raising my weapon while simultaneously bursting into the room.

I slipped immediately, my boots squeaking as I slid on the cheap linoleum, my hand instinctively reaching out to gain some type of purchase and stay upright. Red. There was red on the floor, red that I was slipping in. Blood. God, everywhere. On the walls and the shelves and the supplies. The entire room was in disarray, supplies knocked over on shelves and onto the floor, glass shattered and the overhead light had been smashed.

The most glaring concern were the bodies of two male soldiers on the floor. I looked back at Sara with wide eyes, my heart beating between my ears, my stomach between my knees. My mouth was open but I couldn’t find my voice. Finally, Sara raised her eyes to meet my gaze, and I knew.

I knew.

“Sara,” I gasped, pulling the door closed. For a moment I just stood there, watching her watch me, my head spinning so fast I actually felt dizzy, nauseous, sick. I didn’t understand. I couldn’t understand. This wasn’t…this wasn’t….this wasn’t supposed to happen. Sure, there had been theft and vandalism, and someone had broken into the food rations once or twice, but there had never been… _this_. There wasn’t supposed to be this. Things like this weren’t supposed to happen in here. This was a safe place, the only sanctuary we had left. Out there was where…was where…

_“Nick.”_ Whispered so quietly, I could’ve almost believed it was your voice. I blinked, snapping out of my reverie and springing into action. Quickly, I holstered my gun and reached down, pulling Sara to her feet. I removed her jacket and handed her mine. She pulled it on slowly, moving stiffly, and I felt my chest tightening. I wiped the blood from her face with her jacket, smearing it more than effectively removing it. She winced as I hastily rubbed at her skin but I didn’t have time to be gentle. I tossed her jacket to the floor and grabbed her arm roughly, tightly. She made no attempt to pull away.

“Come on,” I ordered. I maneuvered past soldiers and employees and volunteers, beyond the lost and the hopeless and the helpless, keeping Sara close by my side as we made our way to the parking garage. I kept my eyes peeled for immediate danger, but I could see it everywhere now that I was looking for it. It was right there, right in their eyes, on their faces – the hunger, the desperation, the potential. I wondered if they could see it on mine.

Once I had Sara buckled into the SUV, I came around to the driver’s side and climbed inside. I slipped the key into the ignition, my fingers ready to turn the engine over, but for a moment I just sat there breathing hard, willing my heart to stop pounding.

I could see Sara out of the corner of my eye draped over the seat listlessly like a wet rag. It hurt too much to look at her. How I could’ve been so stupid, so naïve to ever let her out of my sight, especially after what had happened to you, was beyond me. But it was a mistake I wasn’t going to make again.

I took a shaky breath, starting the truck and backing out of the parking space.

“Where are we going?” Sara asked, as I shifted into drive.

“Does it matter?”

She shook her head. “No.”

And Sara and I left the Crime Lab for the last time.

***

You were born in a small, affluent town in Minnesota, and I wasn’t entirely sure of the circumstances, but your grandfather had decided to leave due to of some kind of falling out with one of his brothers. So he left his entire family with your grandmother and relocated to the west coast. Your mother and father stayed behind, but only for a short while. Jan – your dad – couldn’t stand to see his wife Annie so heartbroken without her beloved father, so he quit his job and scooped you both up, and that was how your family ended up in San Gabriel, California.

The house you grew up in – the same one your mother, father, and grandparents still resided in –was built by your Papa Olaf when you were just an infant. He drew up the plans with an architect and built your mother her dream home, which included a small detached apartment for him and Nana. It also included several bedrooms for the three siblings you were supposed to have, but the house would never be filled with the smiling faces of your brothers and sisters after your mother lost her ability to bear children following your birth.

It stood before Sara and me, appearing as empty as the rest of the houses in this neighborhood, in this town, this world. Windows had been boarded up with plywood from the inside, broken glass and debris littering the front porch and yard. Your childhood home, quietly decaying behind overgrown landscaping that hadn’t been tended to in what looked like months, the once bright blue façade dull and faded on this dreary November day.

We both tensed as quick movement caught our eye, our hands hovering over our service pistols, but it was only a couple of deer sprinting across the street. More and more wild animals had been leaving the forests and heading into the abandoned towns and cities, and it was no longer out of the ordinary to spot them in the open.

“We shouldn’t stay out in the street,” Sara stated, her eyes nervously scanning the surrounding area. She wrapped my jacket tighter around herself, shifting from foot to foot in the chilly evening air.

“Yeah,” I agreed, even though I wasn’t entirely sure I was prepared to face whatever was inside. But you and I had planned to check on your family before you were taken away from me, and I wasn’t going to go back on my promise just because you were gone, even if I was a few months late.

I cleared my throat, then swallowed hard as I approached the front door. The knob was broken, the frame splintered with newer wood nailed over it as if it had been repaired after someone had kicked it in. I tried turning the knob anyway, but it was bent and dented in and wouldn’t budge. I didn’t want to break it down and destroy what was left of your childhood home, and I wasn’t sure how it had been secured from the inside. If it was boarded up or nailed shut, I could hurt myself trying to get in.

“Come on,” I said, indicating for Sara to follow me. I led her to a window on the side of the house, wiping away dirt and grime from the glass with my shirtsleeve and peering inside. I saw the familiar full-sized bed, posters of punk bands and near pornographic photographs of Madonna and Sharon Stone taped to the walls, assuring me I was in the right place. I reached within the bushes beneath the window, rustling around rocks and dirt and dead leaves.

“What are you doing?” Sara asked, her brow furrowed. Her gaze kept shifting between me and our surroundings, continuing to keep a watchful eye over us.

“Greg used to sneak out of the house at night when he was a teenager,” I told her. “He rigged the latch on the window to slide shut as soon as it closed, but he also rigged it to slide open. I just…need…to find…aha!”

I pulled the rusty old metal ruler out from the brush, slipping it between the window and the frame, grunting as I twisted and pushed to find the right angle to slide the latch open.

“He showed me how he did it,” I continued. “Came in handy when we snuck out with his dad to get drunk on Christmas Eve three years ago.”

Sara frowned, her expression displaying her puzzlement. “Three years ago? Why would three grown men have to sneak out of a house?”

“That was the year Greg’s mom found Jesus and no one was allowed to drink anymore, including Jan, Greg’s dad,” I informed her. She pulled her gaze away from scanning our surroundings to cock an eyebrow at me. I grinned crookedly, shrugging. “It only lasted until she missed the buzz wine gave her when she took it with her Xanax.”

Sara rolled her eyes. “I see.”

“Got it!” I exclaimed triumphantly as I finally felt the latch unlock. I pushed up on the frame, the wood protesting noisily from disuse as I slid the window open. Tentatively, I peeked my head inside. The room was empty, and I listened for a few moments but could only hear silence beyond the open bedroom door. I glanced back at Sara. “Do you want to wait out here while I check the place out?”

She offered me a withering stare.

“I can handle it,” she stated, pushing past me and hoisting herself up into the house. I sighed, recalling the many times we’d gone in together to clear a scene, how I’d always trusted her to have my back and never worried that she couldn’t take care of herself. I trusted her still, but now, after what had happened at the Crime Lab, my stomach twisted at the thought of leaving her alone.

I followed her inside, leaving the window open in case we had to make a quick escape. Sara was at your old wooden desk examining a photograph in a battered frame. Her hard expression softened at the sight of you with your best friend in high school, a boy named David that you had loved deeper than a brother. Your gangly arm was slung over his shoulder, your body flush to his side, head leaning on his shoulder. Mischievous eyes peeked over a pair of wayfarers, a bright smile with just a hint of self-deprecation aimed right at the camera, and even at the age of fifteen you managed to make that messy, straight-out-of-bed look that took painstaking time to achieve seem so effortless.

She put the photograph down, delicate fingertips tracing over words and patterns and memories that had been etched into the desk long ago by once anxious hands. I wondered if she was imagining you as you appeared in that picture, sitting at this desk and pausing in your schoolwork to carve fleeting thoughts into wood.

I peered over her shoulder as her touch trailed down a line of initials. _GS + ~~DV~~ \+ ~~AS~~ \+ ~~JD~~ \+ ~~RM~~ \+ ~~CB~~ \+ ~~AT~~ \+ NS. _ She smiled knowingly as she found the last pair of initials, her gaze meeting mine. My chest tightened, _ached_ , and I had to blink away the sudden stinging in my eyes.

Her gaze shifted to behind me, her eyes widening in fear. I startled at the sound of a rifle cocking, my entire body tensing.

“Do not move,” a gruff and booming voice commanded over the pounding of my heart. “I am an excellent shot and will not hesitate to prove it.”

I felt a smile tugging at my lips. Sara blinked with surprise at my reaction, her eyes bouncing between myself and the man behind me, confusion marring her expression.

“I’m sure you would be…” I retorted. “If you weren’t as blind as a bat.”

There was a pause. “Nick?”

“Olaf,” I breathed with relief, turning to face the old man. His bright blue eyes sparkled even through his severe cataracts, his smile warm and inviting. He reached for me with his free hand, the other still holding his rifle at his side, and I slipped my fingers into his palm without hesitation. He pulled me bodily into a fierce hug, his grip much stronger than one would think to look at him, and I relished in the familiar and comforting embrace. “We didn’t mean to scare you.”

He pulled back suddenly, looking over my shoulder in Sara’s general direction, unseeing eyes searching hopefully. “Hojem?”

I opened my mouth to speak, to say something, anything, but I couldn’t seem to find my voice. Couldn’t seem to find the words, to break his heart, to tell him I’d so carelessly lost his only grandson. I only managed to shake my head, clenching my jaw, trapping the words in my mouth.

“No,” I finally choked out, before clearing my throat and regaining my composure. I watched as Olaf’s face fell, his shoulders slumping, and he sighed deeply as his bright eyes glittered with tears. “No, he’s not…Greg’s not here.”

“Is he…?” Olaf asked, his voice breaking and he was unable continue.

“No,” I quickly responded. “He was taken.”

“Quarantine.” The old man spat out the word as if it was the vilest cussword, making his feelings on the controversial practice obvious. Quickly, he recovered, turning towards what must’ve been Sara’s shadowy form in his cloudy vision. “Tell me, who did you bring me the pleasure of meeting?”

“You remember hearing about Sara, Papa Olaf, Greg’s – ”

“Miss Sidle,” Olaf said, hastily pushing me aside in his excitement. He smiled broadly, reaching for her and she swiftly moved forward to meet him. She gasped with surprise as he pulled her into a tight hug, the large man nearly enveloping her entire body in his embrace.

“It’s…nice to meet you,” she stammered uncertainly, as she awkwardly brought her arms around the old man.

“Let me get a good look at you,” he insisted, placing his hands on her shoulders as he took a step back to study her. He brought one hand to the top of her head, trailing his hand down her hair to the side of her face, cupped her cheek and brushed a thumb gently across her skin. “My grandson, you are all he talks about when he isn’t talking about Nick. You are just as beautiful as he described.”

“I thought you couldn’t see me,” she blurted.

“My dear,” he admonished softly, pulling her into another embrace. “One does not need to see to appreciate beauty. And you are the most beautiful thing I have seen in a long time.”

Her lips formed a tight line, her chin quavering as she struggled to maintain her composure. She closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around him, clutching his sweater tightly in her fists. Finally, she managed a smile, nodding into his neck, and I wondered if his words helped to soothe something deep inside of her, something those soldiers had tried to take from her.

“I see where Greg gets his charm,” she murmured, sniffling and wiping her nose on her – my – jacket sleeve.

“You can also safely assume it is the same place he got his good looks,” Olaf commented, mischief in his eyes. He turned towards the door, indicating for us to follow. “Come, come. I’m sure you’re both hungry. Let’s get you something to eat, I have some leftover chili. You can clean up while I heat it up.”

“Is it vegetarian?” Sara asked, and I gaped at her rudeness. She shrugged at me, appearing sheepish. “What? Just asking.”

Olaf’s laugh was loud and hearty, the best sound I’d heard in a long time. “You would never make it in Norway, my dear.”

***

Olaf graciously allowed us to shower, and thanks to natural gas, he still had hot water. I hadn’t taken a hot shower in God knew how long, and maybe I spent longer in there than I should have, but the hot water running down my back, soothing my aching muscles, clearing my spinning head, felt so damn good I couldn’t help but steal a few extra minutes.

Sara must have had the same notion. Twenty minutes later, damp hair resting in natural curls on her head, she joined me at the kitchen table eating a three-bean chili that was as delicious as it was animal free. Luckily for her, there was quite a shortage of packaged meat considering grocery stores and butchers no longer existed. The only steady food supplies now were located inside of military safe zones, and obviously to live in one of those was not an option anymore.

We were both wearing clothes borrowed from Greg’s parents’ closets. Olaf was washing mine in the sink, but Sara had carried hers downstairs after her shower and stuffed them right into the kitchen trash. Including my jacket, but I wasn’t sure I would be able to wear it again without my skin crawling. Olaf didn’t comment, only eyed the trash briefly before continuing about his business.

It was quiet in the house. Unnervingly quiet, but none of us were offering up much in terms of conversation. Olaf didn’t ask about Greg. I didn’t ask about Nana or Jan or Annie. I guess in the end it didn’t really matter where they were, just that they weren’t here.

“Do you have plans?” Olaf asked suddenly, wringing my shirt out of the soapy water. He hung it up on a makeshift clothesline hanging across the doorway to the dining room, then wiped his hands on his jeans before looking at us expectantly.

The question took me by surprise. I hadn’t thought further than making it here. I shrugged, struggling to answer. I swallowed hard. “No. No, we don’t have any plans.”

“Then you will stay here,” Olaf stated, smiling reassuringly. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped at his eyes. “Stay a while, okay? At least until Greg gets here.”

I swallowed hard, my eyes burning at how casually he said those words, as if it were as good as fact. Grass was green and the sky was blue and you would arrive as soon as you could. I regarded Sara, who was frowning into her chili as she stirred it with her spoon. The metal of her spoon began clattering against the ceramic bowl, her trembling fingers quickly releasing it.

I reached across the table and took her hand, squeezing her slender fingers comfortingly. She looked up at me from beneath dark eyelashes, still frowning, and I could see the distress in her eyes, the sadness, the shame – shame I felt too, knowing Papa Olaf believed his grandson could return while the idea that you were gone forever had crept slowly into my heart and somehow secretly cemented itself into my soul over these past few months.

Finally, I nodded, my voice thick as I spoke. “Yeah, of course we’ll stay. We wouldn’t want to miss Greg.”

“Good, good,” Olaf agreed, smiling with obvious relief. “He would hate to be left behind.”

I wondered how you would feel knowing you already had been.

* * *

To be continued...


	15. December 24, 2014

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since the series is over, I guess I’d better finish this. Sorry for the delay!

KWPR, 99.9 FM radio, December 24, 2014: _“♬...So won’t you tell me you’ll never more roam, Christmas and New Year will find you home. There'll be no more sorrow, no grief and pain, and I’ll be happy...happy once again…♬”_

* * *

It was the kind of cold that seeped into your bones. I slammed my ax into the tree stump in the back yard, releasing my hold on it in order to flex my fingers in my gloves, attempting to ease the stiffness in them without much success. It was late in the evening; Olaf had already gone to bed, but these days sleep eluded me. It didn’t seem to matter how tired my body was, I just couldn’t ever turn my mind off. I was only out here chopping firewood at dusk in hopes I could exhaust myself enough to pass out for the night.

Besides, we could always use the extra wood. There were two fireplaces in the house, one in the master bedroom -- your parents’ room -- and one in the living room. Olaf slept in the master suite while Sara and I camped out in the living room. There was a set of couches in there, but after a few restless nights and waking up with knots and cramps in our backs, we’d dragged a couple of mattresses from the other bedrooms and set up a sleeping area. It wasn’t much, but it would do.

The first thing Sara and I had taken up upon our arrival was to secure the house against intruders. The only way Olaf had survived thus far was because no one knew he was there, but three people living in a home, having to come and go gathering food and supplies, plus the addition of smoke coming out of the chimneys once the colder weather started, someone was bound to notice us sooner or later. We’d boarded up the windows from the inside, gathered as many guns and ammunition as we could find from neighboring houses, and braced the doors with two by fours so no one could kick them in. After that was finished, we spent our days keeping busy with housework, doing minor repairs and sealing off rooms to keep the heat in now that it was winter.

We scavenged at least once a week, breaking into homes or abandoned stores and grabbing whatever hadn’t already been taken by other desperate survivors. I hated it when Sara went by herself, but short of tying her to a chair, there wasn’t anything I could do to stop her. She had always been a solitary person, needing her space more often than not, and I understood her need to be alone. I just couldn’t help thinking of finding her on the floor in the Crime Lab, bloodied and bruised and broken, those soldiers that had -- those --

Maybe that’s why she had to go. To prove something to me. To herself.

So I would just keep my mouth shut and let her go, telling her to be careful although I know she hated it when I said it, but she at least let me have that. I’d sit by the window, peeking through the wooden two by fours nailed across it until I’d see her slinking down the street. I always made sure to look busy when she came into the house, and while I’m not sure I was fooling anyone, I think she at least appreciated the effort.

We spent our nights sitting up by the fire on our respective mattresses and talking, but always staying on the superficial. Old cases, movies, foods we missed, places we’d been, but not about you. Not about Grissom. And never about the future.

I wasn’t sure how long we were intending on staying here. Olaf was always assuring us you’d be arriving any moment now; he even made extra food during meals, setting a serving aside for you on the counter and only offering it to one of us or eating it himself once it was about to turn rotten. He always smiled and said, “Maybe tonight,” or “Maybe tomorrow.”

I wondered if he was really that optimistic, if he really believed you were coming. I wondered if he thought if he believed it hard enough and held on long enough, it would come true. I wondered if he was too loyal or too guilty to let go, if he thought he didn’t believe there wouldn’t be any hope for you at all.

I wondered if he was doing it for our sake -- for mine. If he could see the pain in my eyes, the longing, the despair, if he thought admitting his only grandson was dead would finally be what broke that tenuous thread holding me together. I tried not to be so obvious, keeping myself busy with chores around the house, scavenging, and listening to the radio for newscasts. (Although now, between the military propaganda and hardcore conspiracy theorists, and Patriot groups just as obnoxious as both, it was becoming too difficult to sit through listening for any amount of time without wanting to pull my gun and shoot the radio right where it stood.)

I tried not to think about where you were or what was taking you so long. If you’d managed to survive quarantine, you would have still had to survive the virus, and I didn’t know a single person that had tested positive and recovered. And even if you had gotten better, and made your way from wherever the military had taken you to Las Vegas, when you couldn’t find me, I knew the first place you would have gone was here. And surely you would have been here by now.

So why were we still here?

A few times Olaf asked about my family in Texas, if I was planning on making my way down there. Of course I yearned to see if my mother and father were alive, my siblings and nieces and nephews. I was sure they would have migrated to the family ranch, imagined them wondering where I was and if I was all right.

It was always implied I’d leave after your arrival, but the longer we waited for you, the higher the chances my family might have to head somewhere else. Whether for safety reasons, because they’d run out of food, to seek medical care, there were a million reasons they’d have to leave. Leaving me behind.

But I couldn’t leave you behind. Not yet. I guess I was living in the same blissful ignorance as Papa Olaf.

I dropped the wood down on the back porch with a sigh, before straightening up and arching my back, rubbing at my lower back with both hands. I tried not to remember how it felt when your strong, nimble fingers used to ease away the knots in my muscles, the way your mouth would twist into a wry smile as I groaned beneath your touch, eyes knowing as you admonished me for not doing the stretches the physical therapist had instructed me to do twice every day.

Once I let you take me to your yoga class. I’d been appalled at the amount of hot, young women in the room and the way they fawned all over you. You ate up the attention, flirting relentlessly with them right in front of me. I was sure it was to make me jealous, but when you introduced me all the girls seemed to already know who I was. I’d embarrassed myself with my inflexibility and utter lack of understanding what the fuck I was doing, but there had been no shortage of helpful women to show me exactly what I was supposed to do. I don’t know if it was because they knew I wasn’t interested in women that they had absolutely no problem putting their hands all over me and pressing their ample breasts against my body as they bent me into positions a dignified man had no right being in, but your smirk as you watched me blush --

“What’s that smile for?”

I let a quiet laugh escape my lips in a cloud of steam as I glanced at Sara from over my shoulder. She must’ve snuck out onto the back porch while I’d been daydreaming. “Just thinking about yoga.”

“Yoga?” she asked, her elegant brows drawing together as she paused in lighting a cigarette. “Like the exercise yoga?”

“I was thinking more of the humiliating form of torture yoga,” I shot back, as I stacked the firewood in the pile against the wall. I heard the click of her lighter, her face illuminating briefly in a soft glow in the darkness. “Greg thought it would help my back. I think he only took me to take my ego down a few notches.”

“You know he only went for the hot girls right?”

“Yeah, I know,” I responded resignedly, grabbing a few pieces of wood to take inside. “You heading to bed?”

“Nah,” she said, eyes watching the yard. “You?”

“Nah.”

“Found some whiskey in the neighbor’s house today,” she stated, apropos of nothing.

“What kind?”

“Maker’s Mark.”

“How much?”

“The whole bottle.” She folded her arms across her chest as she peered at me with narrowed eyes. “I’ll trade you for some of that chocolate I know you’re hoarding in your backpack. Which is mean, by the way, hiding that from the only woman in the house.”

I grinned sheepishly, shifting the load in my arms. “Found out about that, huh?”

“I forgive you,” she offered, as she bent over to stub out her cigarette into the empty flower pot she’d been substituting as an ashtray. Sara hadn’t smoked in almost fifteen years, and while I know the two of you had been sneaking one here and there to combat the stress during the past year, the habit had seemed to stick for her lately. She stepped down from the porch and moved to the side of the house where we were keeping coolers to store perishable food items outside in the cold, returning shortly with a cold bottle of whiskey. “I’ll get the glasses. You get the chocolate.”

“Done.”

We were soon settled on the mattresses, drinking whiskey quietly as we watched the fire. Sara was sitting with her back to the couch, long legs crossed at the ankles as she cradled a rock glass in her slender fingers. She was wearing an oversized tee shirt and grey sweatpants, a knitted blanket draped over her shoulders. I squatted down by the fireplace, adding another few pieces of wood and thinking I should check on Olaf soon to make sure it was still warm enough up there despite the fact that he kept insisting his pure Norwegian blood would keep him alive in any cold temperatures. He sounded so ridiculously like you when he said stuff like that.

“Do you know what day it is?” Sara asked quietly.

I poured myself another glass, corking the bottle and carefully placing it aside before shifting back on my mattress and propping myself up on one elbow. Frowning, I stared into the amber liquid as I tried and failed to recall the day of the week or number of the day. I know I’d had few drinks, but not enough that I thought I shouldn’t remember something like that.

Startled, I asked, “It’s still December, isn’t it?”

“It’s Christmas Eve,” she said. She pointed to the clock with the same hand holding her glass. “Well, it will be for a few more hours. Then it’ll be Christmas.”

A heavy silence fell over the room as we both considered her statement. This same time last year we were all gathered at Morgan’s funeral, the three of us huddled awkwardly together at one side of the room as we watched her parents mourn. I don’t think I’d ever seen Ecklie cry before, intensified by the fact that he was sitting alone while Morgan’s mother cried into the arms of her husband, the same man that shared the last name of Ecklie’s own daughter.

I remember the fear that had crept up on me as we stood there, thinking how easily that could be you in that closed coffin, your smiling face watching us from the portrait on the easel beside it. With the state of things, it hadn’t seemed like such an unlikely scenario. I’d gripped your hand so hard in that dark room at the funeral home, your palm warm in mine, fingers strong. I’d been so grateful that even if we weren’t together, you were still there beside me.

God, what an idiot I’d been.

“Seems so long ago,” Sara murmured, and I knew we were sharing the same memories. I met her eyes, brown orbs flickering with the reflection of the firelight, glittering with unshed tears. “Of all the ways I thought we’d end up, I didn’t quite imagine this.”

“Sara, why didn’t you go to Atlanta with Grissom?” I blurted out, was just drunk enough to. I’d been dying to know for months, but afraid of the answer at the same time. I didn’t want to be the reason why she’d stayed behind, even though I was grateful she hadn’t left. Hadn’t left me.

She shrugged, expression bitter as she took a sip of her drink. “He never asked me. I guess he just assumed I was going. He packed his bags and looked at me and said, ‘Aren’t you coming?’ I said, ‘I have to work.’ And he goes…‘Oh.’ And that was it. End of discussion.” She scoffed, smiling ironically as she shook her head. “Greg gets sick and you drop everything to be with him. You leave your job, your friends, your entire life, no questions asked. And I get ‘oh.’” She laughed again, holding her hands out in disbelief. _“‘Oh.’”_

Her face crumpled then, tears spilling over onto delicate cheeks before she wiped away at them angrily. “Sounds stupid now, right?”

She started crying harder, turning her face away in embarrassment. I sighed with sympathy as I placed my glass carefully on the floor before moving over to her, sitting back against the couch as I draped an arm over her shoulder and pulled her close.

“It’s not stupid, Sara,” I gently soothed, as she gripped my thigh with one hand, the other still holding her glass. I could feel the drops of her tears hitting my tee shirt. “You deserve better than that.”

“I still miss him,” she sniffled, her voice muffled by my shoulder.

“I do too,” I agreed softly.

“I miss Greg.”

I swallowed the burning in my throat, blinked away the stinging in my eyes. “I do too.”

We drank some more. Until the fire died down to embers and we were huddled together beneath several blankets to stay warm, facing each other and whispering in the dark about you and Grissom and everyone else we used to know, holidays we’d spent together and places we’d been, places we’d wanted to go. I told her about Wolf Lake. About teaching you to fish and how excited you’d been to catch your first fish, and while you’d turned your nose up at the thought of cleaning it, you’d still done it. You’d gotten scales absolutely everywhere, guts splattered all over the cabin sink, and I can’t say there had been much meat left on the damn thing once you’d finished, but the pride on your face as you’d held out a plate with two tiny, mangled fillets for me to grill was something I’d never forget.

“He kept telling everyone how you didn’t know how to work your reel,” Sara said. “He said he had to sweep in to pull in this giant bass to save you from falling in the water.”

“What?” I whispered harshly with wounded dignity. “First of all, it was a catfish, and _I_ wasn’t the one -- why am I even explaining this to you? You know who we’re talking about here.”

Sara gave a watery laugh, wiping her nose on her shirtsleeve. “Do you really think he’s coming?”

“I don’t know,” I managed to say, my voice raw as it was pulled from me. “Even if he survived quarantine, how many people do you know have survived the virus?”

“All we know is that they were taken to quarantine,” she stated adamantly. “We don’t know what happened after that. Maybe there were some survivors.”

“You think he’s still alive?” I asked, leaning back to look at her.

“I think I don’t know that he’s dead.”

“What does the evidence say?” I challenged.

“The evidence says he’s most likely dead,” she stated, hasty to add, “ _Most likely._ But without a body…”

I shook my head, scoffing. “Maybe not enough to convince a jury, huh?”

“Not sure the DA would take that chance and prosecute.”

It suddenly struck me that it wasn’t fair that she was stuck here with me waiting for someone who might never come when she had someone that might’ve been waiting for her across the country. It would have taken some time to get there, but surely we could make it without too much trouble if we were careful. Although I wasn’t sure if Papa Olaf would be willing to go, considering how hellbent he was on you making your way over here, but maybe with enough convincing he might make the trip. I don’t think I could leave him here alone, even with enough supplies. As much as I hated the thought, Sara always had the option of traveling by herself. I suddenly wondered if she’d been waiting for some kind of permission this whole time, too guilty to tell me she wanted to leave.

“Sara, do you want to go to Atlanta?” I asked. “Maybe Grissom’s still at the CDC. We could -- ”

“I’d rather wait here with you,” she interrupted, one of her hands coming up to wrap itself tightly around my bicep, the other clutching my shirt tightly, as if she let go I would be pulled right out of her grasp and gone just like you and everyone else we’d ever known.

I brushed the back of my finger over her cheek. “It’s okay, Sara. I’m not going anywhere. Maybe I should have said this earlier, but I’m really glad you stayed. I don’t think I could’ve made it by myself.”

The gentle press of her lips against mine as sudden as it was unexpected. Soft and lingering, her lips delicate, face smooth, so different from kissing you. I froze, afraid to move, one of my hands trapped beneath me, the other hovering in the air somewhere over her shoulder. I didn’t know what she wanted -- I didn’t know what _I_ wanted -- and I didn’t want to push her away or pull her closer or do anything that might frighten her. After what those men had done to her in the Crime Lab, I knew there were certain touches that were okay (her arms, across her shoulders), some that weren’t (her lower back), and I’d still spook her sometimes if I came up behind her unexpectedly, so I was always careful to make noise when I entered a room.

She shifted closer to me, pressing her breasts against my chest, her thigh against my groin. I wanted to stop her, but I didn’t know how. I wanted to stop myself, but I couldn’t. I was overwhelmed with the need to be with her. It wasn’t desire. I wasn’t attracted to Sara; I wasn’t attracted to women at all. The last woman I’d slept with had been in college -- my “experimental phase,” as you called it. But I was so alone, in the deepest depths of disparity, and I longed for you so much. I just wanted, for one night, to have a connection with someone that was just as lost as I was.

I gave in to the kiss, opening my mouth and allowing her tongue to flutter inside. She tasted like whiskey and cigarettes. Her hand slid down my back and up my shirt to grip my hip with slender fingers, pulling me closer to grind my hips against hers. It had been so long since I’d been with anyone, I was hard within moments. I leaned towards her, rolling us in an attempt to get on top of her when she froze, a sharp gasp escaping her lips. Quickly I pulled away, breathing hard, but she followed my mouth with hers, capturing my lips in a kiss of pure desperation as she straddled me.

My heart ached as I wondered once again if she was trying to prove something me, to her, to invisible men in fatigues.

She rode me in the dark, the only sounds in the room our heavy breathing punctuated with soft moans. I couldn’t see her face. Her waist was so tiny between my large hands, her skin so smooth. Her hands were on my chest, palms too small as she held herself up. The weight of her wasn’t heavy enough, the feel of her was all wrong. I missed you even more than I thought possible in that moment, lonelier than I had ever been even though Sara and I were as close as two people could get.

The silence that followed was heavy. Sara lay with her back to me, a silhouette of curves in the dark. I wanted to say something -- anything -- to stop the awkward veil of regret that had fallen over us, but I couldn’t think of a damned thing to say. Finally, she cleared her throat, glancing at me from over her shoulder.

“I’m not in love with you, you know,” she blurted.

It startled a laugh out of me. “Is that the Sara Sidle way of letting someone down easy? Because if so, it could use some work.”

“Sorry,” she hastily said, the tension broken. “I just meant…”

“I know what you meant,” I gently responded, sitting up to pull my clothes on. I could hear her shifting in the dark. “Just a little too much to drink, that’s all. Not the first time I’ve done something I regret after too much whiskey.”

“Wasn’t all bad,” Sara said, her voice teasing. “I mean, I guess I understand now what Greg sees in you. He was right, you know.”

“About what?”

There was a pause. “You are bigger than Gil.”

I gasped like a virginal schoolgirl. “Sara! Why would you -- ? When has Greg seen -- ?” I stammered, before letting out a disgusted groan. “No. No, do not answer any of those questions. I don’t want to know. I just -- ugh! Sara, why?”

Her laugh was light and satisfied. “Merry Christmas, Nick. From me to you.”

* * *

To be continued.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave me some kudos or reviews or something! I haven't gotten much feedback on this story even though it's one of my favorites I've written. Thanks!


	16. May 13, 2015

* * *

May 13, 2015

* * *

_“Do you ever think about having kids?”_

_We were sitting on the front porch of my parents’ ranch, drinking coffee and watching my nieces and nephews run around the front yard with boundless energy, screaming and squealing and giggling. The smaller ones were chasing the poor herding dogs, excited barking adding to the pleasant chaos._

_The question surprised me. I raised my eyebrows. “Do you?”_

_You shrugged indifferently from your seat beside me, slouched down low, your long legs splayed out in front of you. Your expression and body language implied disinterest, but I knew you far better than that._

_“You really want kids some day?” I pressed._

_“Just seems like something for other people.” Your eyes were on the children, peering at them from over your coffee cup. Unexpectedly, your lips quirked up in a sideways smile. “You know you’d always have to play bad cop, right?”_

_“Bad cop?” I asked, appalled. “You_ have _seen me in interrogations, right? I don’t do bad cop. I’m always good cop. It’s the whole Southern charm thing.”_

_You rolled your eyes, snorting with amusement. “You’re a pushover anyway,” you stated, and, decision made, your fate as perpetual bad cop accepted, that seemed to be the end of it._

_“You really want kids some day,” I said more than asked, my voice reflecting the awe I was sure was written all over my face. In typical fashion, you ignored my shock, nonchalantly sipping from your coffee as if we hadn’t just had a life-altering, earth-shattering conversation. I felt a fluttering in my stomach, a warmth blooming in my chest as I leaned back in my chair. You wanted children. With me. “Huh.”_

_***_

Sara was just beyond the open back door, kneeling down in the dirt tending to her garden. She was spraying nearly ripe tomatoes with a natural bug repellant she had concocted to combat the aphids, using her fingers to pinch away any strays on the plant she could find. She leaned back on her butt, sighing as she wiped away the sweat from beneath her wide brimmed hat, leaving a trail of dirt smudged across her cheek. Her loose, flowing blouse was already covered in sweat and earth, reminding me of many nights spent at crime scenes with her and how impressed I had been that she was the kind of woman who didn’t care about getting dirty to get a job done.

When she reached back to press both hands against her lower back, fingers massaging aching muscles, her shirt pulled back, revealing the ever growing swell in her belly.

A baby.

“If you are wanting to head to Texas,” Olaf said, as he stood at the sink, hands braced against the counter, unseeing eyes focused out the small kitchen window, “you should probably leave before she gets too big.”

I leaned forward in my seat at the kitchen table, resting my elbows on it as I scrubbed my face with both hands. It was something we didn’t talk about, and that included all three of us. If we did, it meant having a real conversation about who the father was, something we all had a stake in. If it was one of those soldiers, Sara would have accept the fact that her child’s father was a rapist who she had murdered. She would have to see it and know it every time she looked into her child’s eyes. If it was me, I would have to accept the fact that I had a son or a daughter coming into this world very shortly -- into a world that was new and dangerous and no place for a small, vulnerable baby. Papa Olaf never asked either, and I wondered if it was because if it was me, the pain of knowing I had betrayed his grandson would be too much to bear.

When Sara had told me, I hadn’t even been paying attention. I’d just come in from bartering some household items for supplies at one of the local tent communities. They’d been popping up all over, remaining stationary until the U.S. military or other rebel armies inevitably ran them out. Some communities were too close to our home for my comfort, but Sara and I were always careful not to be followed, and as far as I knew no one was aware we were living here.

She had been sitting at the kitchen table, staring at a mug of hot tea in her hands as I placed my bags of various items on the table -- batteries, soap, sugar, among other things. She’d been moodier than usual lately, so I hadn’t tried to engage her in any real conversation, just told her about some of the tents at the market, how busy it had been and that I’d nearly gotten run over by a jerk on a bicycle with a tiny engine on it.

_“I’m late,” she said into her tea._

_“For what?” I asked, as I held the soap close to my nose and took a whiff, picking up lavender and mint. When she didn’t answer right away, I glanced at her, meeting her eyes for the first time. Her expression was equal parts impatience, fear, and_ are-you-an-idiot?

_“Oh!” I said in realization, a rush of anxiety overwhelming me at breakneck speed. My heart was pounding, my stomach twisting violently. I was suddenly lightheaded. I pulled out a chair and sat down, staring unseeing at the items on the table. “Oh.”_

_“Yeah,” Sara deadpanned, frowning._

_“What…” I began, but wasn’t sure where to end. I turned to her with wide eyes. “What are you going to do?”_

_She laughed, bitter and ironic. “What am I supposed to do, Nick? Go to a doctor?”_

Papa Olaf’s hand dropped onto my shoulder as he rounded my chair to sit down beside me, grounding me back in the present. Letting out a deep breath, I leveled my eyes in his direction, opening my mouth to respond when I suddenly realized exactly what he’d said.

“And what about you?” I asked. “You have to come with us.”

He smiled, fleeting and dubious. “I cannot leave without my grandson.”

“We can’t leave without you,” I told him, just as disbelieving.

“Don’t worry about me, _gutten min._ ” He chuckled lightly, waving away my concern with his hand. “I will be fine.”

“How will you survive?” I asked, ignoring the obvious flaw in his argument for the moment. It was still something we didn’t talk about, the fact that you weren’t here, and I thought maybe trying a different tack would be more conducive. “What will you do for supplies? Olaf, we can’t -- ”

“I am not leaving without my grandson,” he repeated adamantly, his voice edged with impatience.

“Olaf,” I insisted, holding my hands out in desperation. “You can’t stay here! It’s not safe! You have to come with us!”

“What’s going on, guys?” Sara asked timidly from the doorway, her hands resting against either side of the frame.

“Olaf wants us to go to Texas without him,” I informed her. She frowned, but said nothing.

Cloudy white eyes regarded me with indignance, expression hard. “I will stay here. When Greg arrives, we will meet you in -- ”

“Olaf -- !”

He slammed his fist on the table with much more force than the old man seemed capable of. “I will stay here!” he shouted, standing up so fast his chair nearly fell backwards, its legs scraping against the floor loudly. “I am not leaving without Greg!”

_“He’s not coming!”_ I shouted back, standing from my own seat at the table.

“Nick -- ” Sara tried, placing a hand on my arm but I shrugged her off.

“Greg’s not coming, Olaf!” I pressed on. “He would have been here by now! He’s dead! Greg is dead!”

My own admission hit me harder than I could’ve imagined, a freight train that was as swift as it was unexpected. The gossamer thread of hope I’d been holding onto disintegrated in my hands, slipping through my fingers, brushing against my skin as it swept away like ashes on the wind. I staggered back, the back of my legs hitting my chair and I sank into it heavily, gripping the wooden arms with white knuckles. I couldn’t breathe.

You were dead.

Sara’s hand landed on the back of my neck, her thumb rubbing soothingly over my skin. I tried to focus on the wooden pattern in the table, but it was blurred through the stinging in my eyes that I desperately tried to blink away.

“My grandson has seen death,” Olaf said with a quiet ferocity. “My grandson _knows_ death. They met before Greg was even born.”

I knew the story well. It had taken your mother several years to carry a child to term. After your difficult, premature birth, followed by months spent in the NICU and several close calls, compounded with the fact that she had lost her ability to bear more children, Annie had never let you out of her sight. She always babied you and smothered you, even as an adult. Fretted over you to the point that you hadn’t even told her you’d been blown to smithereens in the lab or that you’d gone into the field, terrified of upsetting her. She’d been a little left of normal, could’ve probably laid off the red wine and Xanax a little bit, but she was your mother and you’d loved her.

“He came too soon,” Olaf continued. “He was too small. The doctors said he wouldn’t make it. They said even if he did, he wouldn’t be normal.” The old man quirked a smile. “I guess they were right about that.”

I laughed but it came out more like a sob. I pressed a shaking hand against my mouth as hot tears escaped my eyes.

“He was so small in that big incubator,” he said, eyes distant as he imagined you. “Tubes everywhere. We weren’t allowed to hold him but we were allowed to touch him. I put my hand in that box and he grabbed my finger and held on tight. So strong for such a tiny thing. I knew then that he would not die.”

He sat down and reached across the table to place his hand on top of mine. “He didn’t die, Nick. Not then. He didn’t die after that explosion in your lab. They left him in that alley, like a piece of trash, and he didn’t die then either. If there is a way to survive this virus, to survive quarantine, Greg will find it. He knows death,” he said again, more firmly. “And death has not outsmarted my boy yet.”

With that he stood, leaving the kitchen, leaving me shamefaced and suitably chastised where I sat. I wanted to believe. I wanted to _believe_. I wanted it so badly that I _ached_ with it, a physical pain in my chest, an emptiness so vast and desolate it threatened to swallow me whole. I wanted you to be alive, to be somewhere out there thinking about me, trying to make your way back to me. But you had been taken one year ago next month to an unknown quarantine facility that didn’t exist anymore because none of them did. They’d all been shut down long before Sara and I had even left Las Vegas, forgotten and allowed to rot along with all of the dead bodies inside.

I knew there was no way I would ever convince your Papa Olaf that you were gone, and while it was within his rights to hold on to hope despite the odds, I didn’t want to leave an old man alone to fend for himself. God, and I didn’t want to imagine the look you’d give me when you found out I’d left your grandfather behind.

Actually, you knew Olaf better than anyone else. You’d probably roll your eyes at the notion that I ever believed I could convince the old man to do anything he didn’t want to do. God knew you’d inherited your stubborn streak from somewhere.

I just didn’t want to leave the only part left of you that I had.

“We can’t leave him here,” I pleaded to Sara, my voice thick. I swallowed against the lump in my throat. “Sara, we can’t. _I_ can’t. Greg -- ”

“Nick,” she interrupted softly. With much less grace than she used to be able to, she squatted down in front of me, her small hands on my knees, brown eyes big and compassionate as they stared up at me. “This is his home. It’s his wife’s home, and his daughter’s home. His grandson’s home. He’s not going to let go of that.”

“And what about us?” I asked. “Are we letting go?”

She looked away, her lips in a thin line, brow knotted. Her gaze darted as if searching for something, until finally she shook her head. When she looked back at me, her eyes reflected determination. “Just because we don’t solve a case doesn’t mean there isn’t an answer. It just means we haven’t found the right evidence. And we can try to search and to fit the pieces together, but sometimes it just doesn’t work. Eventually...we have to move on to the next case. But it doesn’t mean that that last case goes away. It doesn’t mean we forget about it, or that it doesn’t keep us up at night wondering what we might have missed or what we could have done differently. And it certainly doesn’t mean that someday, we won’t find closure for the victim.”

“Yeah,” I said, barely a whisper. I reached out with my thumb and gently wiped away the dirt on her cheek. “I guess you’re right.”

She wrapped her hand around mine, grasping firmly, expression fierce. “Just don’t give up, Nick. It’s always okay to hope. Life isn’t worth living without hope.”

I sucked in a deep breath, exhaling audibly before nodding.

“I’m going to start putting some stuff together,” she said, gripping my hand for leverage as she carefully stood up. She squeezed my shoulder comfortingly before starting down the hallway.

Alone at the kitchen table, I started thinking about all the things I hoped for. I hoped Sara and I made it to Texas safely. I hoped my family would be there when we arrived. I hoped Olaf could survive on his own until we made it back. I hoped the baby in Sara’s belly would be healthy. I hoped I could keep them both safe.

And most of all, I hoped you were out there somewhere. That you were okay. That I would see you again, and hold you in my arms, feel the warmth of your body against mine. That you would smile and say, _“What took you so long?”_ with a laugh in your voice because you’d been waiting for me all this time, just like I’d been waiting for you.

\---

To be continued.

_gutten min =_ “my boy” in Norwegian


	17. June 1, 2015

* * *

June 1, 2015

* * *

 

The highways and cities were dangerous, and it was nearly impossible to avoid both as Sara and I made our way from San Gabriel, California, to Dallas, Texas. Combined with a working car, a trunk full of cans of gasoline and provisions made us a prime target for thieves, so I made sure to keep my eyes peeled for anything suspicious as we made our way through backroads and side streets.

It had taken a couple weeks for us to gather enough supplies for Olaf to survive for at least a month or so, as well as making sure the house was secure against intruders and protected from the elements. It was one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do, to say goodbye to Papa Olaf. His hug had been tight and warm as he whispered Norwegian in my ear, then said that Greg would be there soon, that the next time we saw each other, we would all be together.

He was almost right.

The trip was taking us much longer than I’d anticipated. Usually, a drive like this would have taken maybe three days. As it stood, even with Sara and I switching off driving, it had taken us four days just to get across the Texas border, and at the rate we were going, we probably had at least one more day of travel left to get to Dallas. So many roads were inaccessible, either blocked by broken down cars, fallen debris like trees or buildings, or barricaded by the military when parts of towns and cities had been blocked off for safe zones or war zones. It was too dangerous to get out of the truck and linger trying to clear the roadway, so we ended up going around or backtracking more times than I could count.

Traveling through a small downtown area, I slowed to a stop as I came to an intersection, frowning at the sight of broken down cars stacked beside one another too tightly for me to fit by in the direction I’d been intending to go. To the left, a streetlight had fallen directly across the road. My eyes traveled down the length of smooth steel, but no flaws indicated where it had been struck or what could’ve caused it to fall over. There were no cars or debris around it, just a car beneath the very top of it where the light was located. The base was split horizontally, right across the bottom, cut neatly. Too neatly for this to have happened naturally.

There was only one way for us to go, which was to the right. I gazed past Sara down the street, but we could only take it so far until another line of broken down cars blocked the way. Then we’d be forced to turn down another side street. My eyes caught movement, but it was too fast for me to pinpoint it.

“We need to turn around,” Sara murmured, frowning as she focused on the downed streetlight beyond the driver’s side window. Her head snapped forward, eyes searching as if she’d seen something out of the corner of her eye too but couldn’t find it. She withdrew the sidearm out of the holster beneath her jean jacket and pulled the slide, cocking it. “Now.”

“Yep,” I responded, shifting into reverse. I draped one arm across her seat, twisting to see behind me as I carefully backed up, although it was difficult with all of our supplies piled back there. I moved slowly, not wanting to startle any unseen guests into making any hasty decisions. Once we were turned around, I accelerated forward, gradually for the first few yards and then I floored it. Immediately, we could hear gunfire in quick successions, probably semi- or fully-automatics.

“Damn it!” Sara hissed, ducking her head, her gun gripped tightly as she peered out her window. “Go!”

“Going!” I gritted out through my teeth, trying to stay low as I sped out of there. I could see figures in the distance in my side view mirror, their guns aimed right at us. A car and a pickup truck we had passed on the way in that had appeared broken down roared to life behind us, tires squealing as they pulled into the street. Suddenly, my mirror exploded in a spray of glass and plastic as it was struck with a bullet. “Shit!”

“They’re right behind us!” Sara cried, her gaze focused on her own side view mirror, her finger on the window control just itching to open it and fire back.

“Stay down!” I commanded.

“Nick, they’re right -- ”

“Just stay down, Sara!” I yelled, maneuvering up and down side streets, trying to make it back out of the downtown area as quickly as possible while keeping an eye on our assailants in the sideview mirror on Sara’s side.

They were right on our tail, both cars swerving wildly as they deftly followed. Abruptly, the smaller car veered off to the right, turning sharply down a side street. The beat up pickup truck stayed close behind us, haphazardly spraying bullets out the window. Either their aim was terrible or, more likely, they didn’t want to hit our car and risk destroying anything we had that might be of value to them, including the car itself (my sideview mirror obviously notwithstanding). They were trying to scare us, but that didn’t mean a stray bullet still couldn’t do some damage to either us or our truck, and they didn’t seem to be too concerned with conserving ammunition.

An old car accident scene blocked us from continuing straight ahead, and when we turned the corner, the small car that had separated from our pursuit was sitting right in the middle of the street, waiting for us. There were two people inside, the driver and one in the back leaning forward excitedly between the two front seats. A third was sitting on the edge of the passenger’s side window, hanging on to the frame with one hand, the other pointing an AK-47 straight at us. His face was dirty. He was smiling.

“Fuck,” Sara breathed harshly from beside me, drawing my attention to her. I followed her gaze to the sideview mirror where I could see the second vehicle slowly pulling up behind us. There were only buildings surrounding us, no side streets. A narrow alley was to our right, blocked a quarter of the way through by a large dumpster on wheels.

We were trapped.

In the sideview mirror, the doors opened up on either side of the truck. Fuck. _Fuck!_ I didn’t care what happened to me, but there was no way I could let these men get their hands on Sara. I had failed her once. I wasn’t going to fail her again. Not least because she was the only precious thing I had left in my life besides Papa Olaf. And the -- and the --

I glanced at the swell in her belly, then to the smiling man, who was climbing down from the car window.

“Get down, Sara,” I said quietly, pulling my sidearm and cocking it out of sight beneath the steering column. I placed it in my lap, waiting for Sara to move but she remained still, both hands gripping her Glock. Gruffly, I grabbed the back of her neck and forcefully pushed her towards the floor. She blurted something, a startled noise that may have been the beginnings of a protest, but I didn’t leave any room for argument.

_“I said get the fuck down!”_ I screamed, voice cracking. I used my strength to force her into compliance, gripping her neck with bruising force, not caring if I was hurting her. She scrambled at the seatbelt, the metal clasp hitting the window with a loud crack as she unbuckled it hastily in order to fold herself into the cramped space in front of her seat, made more difficult by her stomach. Breathing hard, I met her gaze for the briefest of moments, pointing menacingly. Her eyes reflected terror -- at me or the men around us, I didn’t know and I didn’t care as long as she listened. “Don’t move and hold on.”

With that, I gripped the steering wheel hard with both hands and took my foot off the brake before stomping the accelerator into the floor. I jerked the wheel to the right, tires squealing and rapid gunfire sounding as I headed straight for the alleyway. I had no idea if the SUV would fit or if I would kill us both by slamming right into a brick wall, not to mention the dumpster directly impeding our path, but it was our only out and I had to take it.

My vision tunneled to the narrow opening, holding my breath and fighting the instinct to close my eyes, fingers so tight on the wheel my hands ached. The vehicle slipped through the small alley, but not without losing the only remaining sideview mirror. Metal scraped against brick, screeching, grinding; I fought to keep my grip on the wheel as it jerked in my hands. The dumpster was fast approaching, and this time I did close my eyes, pulling one arm up to cover my face as I smashed right into it at full speed.

Sara screamed upon impact, hands up over her head, one still clutching her gun. I opened my eyes when the windshield didn’t explode, keeping my foot down on the accelerator and praying to God there was nothing on the other side of this dumpster that would prove to kill us. I could see the end of the alley above the dumpster, close, closer, until finally we burst out the other side, open road on either side of us.

I hit the brakes and came to an abrupt stop, the dumpster continuing to move even though I’d pulled all the wheels off during our descent down the alley. Quickly, I glanced back to see the truck behind us smashed into one side of the alley. It appeared their aim hadn’t been as accurate as mine, and I appreciated all those endless hours in the shooting range at work.

I had the fleeting image of you, hair spotted with bleach, just starting out as a Level One. Pistol aimed downrange, your posture was all wrong, one eye closed as you squinted at the target. Despite this, of course you hit the target right in the center, grinning and pumping your fists in the air like the nerd you are before turning to me, suavely winking as you blew imaginary smoke from the end of the muzzle of your gun.

Knowing full well they would still be chasing us in the smaller car, and, undoubtedly familiar with the city, that they would be able to catch up quickly, I peeled out of there without hesitation. And now that they were short one vehicle, possibly some had been killed or at least injured in the truck when it crashed, I’m sure they were pretty pissed.

I made it out of the downtown area without spotting the other car. We were driving in the opposite direction we had been headed but I had to put as much distance between us and our assailants as possible before pulling over and checking for damage. The last thing we needed was a bullet stuck in one of our tires, causing a slow leak or for us to blow a flat in the middle of the desert where anyone could spot us; it would be better to find it now and change it hidden from view.

I drove for quite a few miles, into a warehouse district until I spotted a parking garage tucked behind a bank. I pulled in slowly, swiveling my head like an owl making sure we weren’t being followed or walking into another setup. After a cursory drive through the garage and finding it empty, I drove back down to the second floor, parked in a corner, and killed the engine.

For a few moments, I just sat there gripping the steering wheel hard to ease my shaking hands while making a conscious effort to slow my breathing. I had no idea where my gun was; it had slid somewhere in the chaos and I couldn’t see it on the floor. Finally, I turned to Sara, who was watching me with big brown eyes, wide and wild. She flinched when I extended my hand, but I ignored it and the knot it created in my chest, instead waiting for her to reach for me.

Hesitating only briefly, she slipped her fingers into mine, allowing me to pull her up and back into the seat. My gaze swept over her form, but I couldn’t see any obvious injuries, except for where I had grabbed her neck, red and swollen against her pale skin. She sat there for a moment, reaching up with trembling fingers maybe to rub her neck before making an abortive movement, her hand skittering to her gun instead to reengage the safety mechanism.

“Are you all right?” I asked quietly.

She nodded. “Yeah. You?”

“Yeah.”

She let out a shaky breath, reaching down to pick up the map we were using to navigate, crumpled in a heap at her feet. Leaning back in her seat, she shifted uncomfortably while she pulled a face, one hand pressing against her stomach. My heartbeat roared in my ears.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I think I have to pee.”

I breathed, then cracked a grin, trying to ease the tension. “We probably would’ve made it to Dallas two days ago if we didn’t have to make so many rest stops for you.”

“I can’t help it this thing sits right on my bladder,” she grouched. She popped open the passenger’s side door and stepped out, leaving it open as she started unbuckling her belt. Squatting down, she placed one hand on the seat to keep her balance. “I don’t see any damage over here.”

I stepped out of the car, spotting my gun beneath my seat and retrieving it before reengaging the safety and slipping it into its holster. Craning my neck, I then inspected my side of the vehicle.

“Yeah, I’m not seeing any over here either,” I drawled. “Shot out my side view mirror but that’s about it.”

I heard Sara grunt as she struggled to get up. I’d learned pretty quickly not to offer her any help, even though the proper Southern gentleman inside of me screamed in protest every time. But after that first lecture on chivalry and “benevolent sexism” and “gender colonialism” (whatever the hell those things were) for the sake of my sanity and eardrums, I kept my mouth shut. I met her at the back of the SUV, both of us inspecting the trunk but there was no damage there either.

“Got lucky,” Sara stated, her gaze traveling to the open windows of the parking garage, and this time she did rub at her neck, absently as she was distracted.

“Hey, sorry about that,” I said repentantly, reaching out and pushing aside the collar of her jacket to reveal what would probably end up being one hell of a bruise. Gently, I brushed my thumb over her skin, heated from the injury. “I just...I was just…”

“It’s okay, Nick,” she responded, a teasing smile tugging at her lips. “My hero.”

I could feel my face flushing with embarrassment as I rolled my eyes, dropping my hand back to my side and stepping away from her.

“How much further to your folks’?” she asked.

“We might be able to make it by nightfall,” I stated, then sighed as Sara turned to walk back to the passenger’s side. “Barring any more encounters from any other Mad Max wannabees. I think I have to go to the restroom too.”

“Bathroom’s right over there,” she threw over her shoulder airly, pointing to her side of the SUV.

I laughed. “Get in the truck, Sara.”

* * *

My hometown was actually a small suburb of Dallas, Texas, called Murphy. My parents had eventually found success after opening their own law firm through years of determination and hard work, allowing them to buy a sizable ranch in this rural part of Dallas County. I hadn’t always lived there, but it was the only place I remembered, having moved at the age of seven.

“There it is,” I said, unable to keep the excitement out of my voice, edged with anxiety. Sara, in the driver’s seat, craned her neck over the steering wheel, slowing down as we approached a stone half-wall that had once been surrounded by lush landscaping and well manicured grass. Now, it was overgrown with brush and weeds, vines tangling around barely visible faded metal letters. “‘Welcome to the city of Murphy.’”

I pretended not to see the apprehensive glance Sara shot me before she proceeded to make her way through the streets, from the downtown area to the surrounding neighborhoods to the rural country roads. The closer we got to my family ranch, the tighter and tighter my nerves wound. I couldn’t seem to sit still, my fingers gripping the steering wheel or drumming on the armrest, eyes constantly scanning the area as if I could see the property if I squinted hard enough in the distance. I raked my fingers through my hair, tugging at the ends and letting out an audible sigh, then pounded my fist against the passenger’s side door. Sara jumped at the steering wheel, before offering me a questioning look.

“Sorry,” I muttered, holding up my hand in a placating gesture. “I just...I want them to be there.”

Her expression softened. “Me too.”

God, I wanted it so badly. I _needed_ it, needed something out of all this hell and misery. I needed to see my mother, her hazel eyes shining as she kissed me and hugged me; my father smiling with his whole face, crow’s feet and laugh lines etched into his skin that I had inherited. I wondered if my siblings were safe, their spouses and their children.

My eldest sibling and only brother Mike already had a grandchild, his oldest daughter’s and her boyfriend’s, college sweethearts. I could still remember the disdain with which Mike had announced his newly acquired title as grandfather over the phone, but there had been no mistaking the love and joy in his eyes in the picture he had sent me from the hospital room, that baby boy so tiny in his arms. Charlie would be almost two now, if he had made it through the virus.

“It’s, uh, right down this road here,” I stammered nervously, pointing down a long paved road that winded through a dense forest. I let out a shaky breath as we eased our way towards the ranch, leaning forward in my seat, eyes searching until I could see the stone pillars on either side of the large wrought iron gate that sat at the entrance to the property. It was closed. “Let me just get out here and I’ll open the gate.”

Sara nodded, her gaze never leaving the gate, carefully peering beyond it. As I slipped through the door, she pulled her gun from its holster, startling me. I paused with one hand on the doorframe, mouth agape as I regarded the gate with wide eyes, striking me only then that someone else could be in my family home. And how would they have gotten there? Had they found it empty, or taken it by force?

Slowly, I approached the gate. Vines snaked up and around the pillars, twisting through the bars and around the script S located in the center. The hinges were rusted through, the ground blanketed in old, dead leaves piled against the bottom of the fence. Beyond the gate, more leaves and debris covered the drive, a large tree branch draped across the path. It was also covered in vines and dead leaves.

One thing was clear: if anyone was living here, they hadn’t come through the front gate in a long, long time.

I let out a shaky breath, gripping the gate and pushing hard; it didn’t budge. I pushed again, rougher this time, my boots slipping against the leaves on the ground. Still nothing. Stepping back, I brushed my hands off against my jeans, bending my knees slightly and turning my shoulder towards it, slamming myself against it hard and ignoring the jarring pain.

“Nick,” Sara called out the window of the truck, her voice edged with worry.

“I got it,” I shouted back, before striking the gate again. It shifted again, the metal groaning in protest, but it still didn’t open. Once more, I slammed into it, then again. Again.

“Nick -- ”

“I said I got it!” One last time, I slammed into the fence with a frustrated yell, the damn thing finally giving way. I pushed hard with a grunt, the hinges protesting noisily as it slid open, sweeping up leaves and detritus in its wake. For just a moment, I leaned against it, gripping the metal hard with closed eyes, just...breathing. Finally, I sighed, opening my eyes and turning to see Sara frowning at me through the windshield.

She put the car in drive and moved forward slowly, coming to a stop once she’d pulled up to me. I opened the door and climbed inside, my stomach lurching as she took her foot off the break and started up the drive. We followed the wooden country fence as it snaked its way down the path and around the side of the house; once white, it was now faded and weather worn, rotting and collapsing in places.

We turned the corner, and there it was: my family home. A two story house, with gray siding and white window panes, front steps leading up to the wrap around porch that you and I used to sit on and drink coffee while watching the sunrise after staying up the entire night, our bodies still in night shift mode. The front lawn my father had maintained so neatly -- sitting on his old riding mower every Saturday, one hand on the steering wheel, another loosely gripping a can of beer -- was overgrown with tall, wild grass and weeds.

Sara pulled up to the large driveway, looping around to face the entrance before putting the car in park and turning off the engine. She picked up the gun still sitting in her lap, looking to me expectantly.

“Okay,” I breathed, pulling my own sidearm from its holster. “I’ll lead.”

“Right behind you,” she responded, with a reassuring nod.

None of the windows were boarded up. The front door was intact. Carefully, I went to the front door, peering in through one of the dusty window panes, but I could only see the empty living room. The furniture was undisturbed, large flat screen television still mounted to the wall, surround sound stereo system beneath it. I tried the knob, but it was locked. The key was still hidden beneath one of the planters on the front porch, and while I rolled my eyes at my parents’ predictability, an overwhelming feeling of nostalgia created an unexpected burning in my eyes that I quickly blinked away.

The door stuck when I tried it, dried paint chipping between the frame and the door as I roughly shoved it open. It was obvious no one had come through the front door in a while, either. I quietly stepped into the foyer, eyes darting around for any signs of immediate danger but there was none to be seen. The air was still and stale, a thick layer of dust coating nearly every available surface. I held my breath, straining to hear anything, but it was quiet.

The kind of quiet where you just knew the place was empty.

Sara came up beside me, gun pointed to the ground. Her gaze swept over the room, picking up all the same details I had before she looked to me, brow knotted and lips in a thin line. She wasn’t naive enough to holster her weapon, but her posture was relaxed, gun held loosely at her side.

“I’ll take downstairs,” she said, and I only nodded silently, unable to trust my voice.

My legs felt as heavy as lead as I climbed the stairs, gripping the railing with palms so sweaty my hand slipped on the smooth red oak. An image flashed into my mind of my father carefully applying finish to the handrail with a paintbrush, his eyes meeting mine as I watched him from the bottom of the stairs. He smiled, slow and knowing, eyes sparkling as he beckoned me closer. His body was so strong and comforting against my back, hand wrapped around my wrist as he guided me, the paintbrush in my hand gliding across the smooth wood.

I forced myself to release the railing as I paused at the top of the landing, listening again, but still nothing. My parents’ room was to my left, the master suite. The bed was made.  I started on my mother’s side of the room. Her dresser was devoid of all of her jewelry, but not in that hasty way that would suggest someone had taken it while robbing the place. Pictures were missing too, ones that had always sat on the top of the dresser for as long as I could remember. Of my siblings and me, of my parents on their wedding day, of baby Charlie in an ostentatious Easter Sunday outfit his mother had picked out behind his father’s back.

I turned to her closet. The doors were closed. I slid them open, my mother’s evening gowns on one side sparkling in the afternoon sun peeking in through the blinds, shirts and pants hanging neatly above her many, many shoes on the other. Some hangers were empty, but not enough to indicate if clothes had been packed or were maybe just in the wash. I moved to my father’s closet on the opposite side of the room, the doors already open. Trailing my fingers over his collection of sport coats, the sleeves swayed gently beneath my touch. Some of them were over fifty years old, and I scoffed at the dated gold buttons, the heavy wool tweed, the cricketeer plaid.

I pushed them aside, making space in order to see the large safe in the back of the closet. It was open, and completely empty. He’d always kept cash, guns, and ammo inside, along with important paperwork like car titles and social security cards. Squatting down, I could see the door hadn’t been tampered with. Whoever had opened it hadn’t used force; they’d had the key code.

I stood up, ignoring the crack in my knees, and let out a breath before steeling myself and glancing up at the shelf at the top of the closet. My parents’ collection of suitcases was stacked neatly, untouched.

Where had they gone? Sentimental items like pictures taken, but not necessities like clothes? If they had time to take those things, they must not have left in a rush. It certainly didn’t look like they had. And who had gone into the safe? Had it been accessed after the fact, or before?

I turned to the empty room. “Where are you?” I whispered.

With a sigh, I left their bedroom and moved down the hallway, inspecting my sisters’ old rooms. One had been converted into a guest bedroom with two full beds, another into a bedroom-slash-playroom for the grandchildren with bunk beds and an impossible amount of toys. Both rooms appeared undisturbed.

The last bedroom, with navy blue walls and a four post full-sized bed, with football and baseball trophies lining the wooden shelves of a bookcase, had been mine. I was the last of the children to leave at the age of 22 after graduating from Texas A&M, and I’m not sure why my parents never remodeled my room like they had my siblings’. I liked to believe it was because I was the favorite. More likely, it was because my mother couldn’t let go of her last baby.

The framed picture on my nightstand was gone. It was from my college graduation, one of my parents on either side of me, all of us smiling like loons, tears in my mother’s eyes.

Wooden floors creaked behind me. I turned my head slightly, catching Sara in the doorway in my peripheral vision, blurry through the sting in my eyes.

“You know,” I began, my voice rough with emotion. “My brother Mike was already away at college when my parents bought this place. We were the only boys; he was the oldest, I was the baby. My sisters were so jealous I got my own room and they had to share two bedrooms between the five of them. They even convinced me to live in the treehouse so they could have my room. Said it would be the coolest thing ever. I moved half my stuff over there before my parents got wind of it and made them drag everything back in here.”

I laughed, watery and painful. I waited for Sara to say something, but she remained still in the doorway. When I finally looked at her, trembling fingers were pressed against her mouth, the other hand gripping the doorway with white knuckles. She was crying.

“What is it?” I asked, my voice so quiet I barely heard it.

It took her a few tries before she was finally able to choke out, “Outside. Out back. I’m sorry, Nick. I’m so sorry.”

I bolted from the room, pushing her aside hastily in order to move past her, vaguely aware of her hitting the wall with a dull thud. Down the hall I ran, down the stairs, jumping the last few and landing unsteadily on the floor, my boots squeaking on the hardwood. Through the living room and past the den and into the kitchen. The back door was standing open, a gentle breeze ruffling the white curtain hanging on the door window. I stopped dead in the threshold, the breath stolen from me.

Graves. At least a dozen of them, marked with makeshift wooden crosses nailed together. They had been there so long the wood was old and rotted, the grass overgrown on top of the dirt mounds, as tall and as wild as the rest of the property. I moved closer, stumbling down the back steps and staggering through the brush as I wandered through the graves, searching for any indication of who might be buried there but there were no names or markings anywhere.

One of the graves was smaller than all the others, maybe only three feet long. God. The baby. Not the baby. I tripped over my own feet, crashing to my knees in front of the mound, the heels of my hands scraping against the earth. Charlie. God, Charlie. The baby. The baby. He was just a baby.

Someone was making a noise. A wretched, terrible sound, heaving sobs echoing in the expanse of yard, and it took me a moment to realize it was me. I couldn’t stop, hysteria overwhelming me, my breath stuttering as tears escaped my eyes while wounded cries of pain escaped my throat.

There were suddenly arms around me, Sara pulling me close, and I desperately clung to her, my hands clutching at the back of her jacket. She rocked me gently, hair pressed against my face as she told me over and over again how sorry she was so softly into my ear.

* * *

To be continued.


	18. August 6, 2015

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long. I had a huge writer’s block wanting to have a chapter in between this one and the last one, but it just wouldn’t come to me and I didn’t want to bore anyone (my five readers, lol) with a segue.

* * *

August 6, 2015

* * *

Days turned into nights, nights stretched into weeks, and soon months went by as we played the waiting game once again. I worried every day for Papa Olaf, knowing we had only collected and stored enough food for him to last a couple of months, and yet I couldn’t bring myself to leave. Not yet. Not when I was so close.

While it was apparent not all of my family had survived, there were too many clues to indicate that the ones who had had left of their own volition. My dad’s pristine 1976 Ford truck was still in the garage -- his pride and joy that both my brother Mike and I had helped him restore and maintain throughout the years -- but his everyday vehicle, an F150, and my mother’s cadillac were gone. Her handmade crocheted afghan was missing from the back of the couch, where it had always remained as long as I could remember, along with her jewelry. My father’s guns were gone, as well as his old bible that had always sat on his bedside table, the jacket faded and pages worn from years and years of use.

Except their clothes and toiletries had remained, so I had come to terms with the fact that my parents were probably dead -- either buried in the backyard, or the virus had taken them earlier, perhaps even quarantine had gotten them -- but someone had come through here and carefully chosen things of sentimental value to take with them. Someone had taken the time to bury my family in the backyard, and nail together pieces of wood and place them at the head of each grave. Someone like my brother or my sisters.

I wondered if they had waited for me. If I had wasted too much time waiting for you in California. If I was wasting time even now, kneeling here in the grass tugging at a particularly stubborn dandelion from one of the gravesites.

“Hey!” Sara called from the back porch. I turned to glance at her from over my shoulder as she held up what appeared to be a mangled piece of pink knitted yarn. “What does this look like to you?”

“Uh...I don’t know,” I responded hesitantly, squinting my eyes to see better. There appeared to be two long cylinders protruding from either side that could have been sleeves. “A sweater?”

Her shoulders slumped as she dropped her hands to her sides and sat down heavily on the back steps, staring at the mess in her hands. “It’s supposed to be a pair of pants.”

Like me, Sara had to keep herself busy, and she could no longer take care of the yard we had so painstakingly cleaned up when we’d first arrived. Tall and lean, she was small for a pregnant woman so far along, her belly compact -- my father would have called it “a snake that had swallowed a rat” -- but she’d been having more and more trouble getting up and down lately, sharp, shooting pains in her lower back.

After finding my mother’s knitting tools and some how-to books in one of the upstairs closets, she’d dived right into learning all the stitching and knots and loops or whatever the hell those things were called, sitting on the couch in the living room for hours knitting as she referred to her books. She’d mastered scarves and blankets, but was having some trouble now that she’d ventured into more complicated patterns. Socks were more like pouches, mittens misstitched and crooked, and the hat she had made me was shaped more like an acorn -- wide on the sides and pointed on the top.

She’d never made anything for the baby before. It was still something we didn’t talk about, despite the fact that Sara could have been as far as nearly nine months by now. Depending on who...depending on who the father was. So while we probably should have been having serious conversations about everything from labor and delivery to where we wanted to raise the baby longterm and how, both Sara and I were the masters of compartmentalizing.

Maybe this was her way of broaching the subject, or perhaps the neat little box she’d stored all things baby inside her mind was finally spilling over. I sighed heavily, wiping my hands on my jeans before standing up and crossing the yard to the steps. Sitting down next to her, I placed a hand on her knee.

“You don’t have to be the best at everything, you know,” I told her.

She pouted as she threw the tiny pair of baby pants to the ground. “Yes, I do.”

I smiled as I leaned down to retrieve it, brushing away a few blades of grass that had stuck to the yarn. “Pink, huh?”

“Why?” she asked defensively, her eyes narrowed as she regarded me with a sideways glance. “Something wrong with it?”

“No, no,” I responded quickly, holding up my hands placatingly. “Pink’s a nice color for a girl.”

“Boys can’t wear pink?” she shot back, and I raised my eyebrows at her petulance. She rolled her eyes. “Sorry. I’m not having a good day. I’ve been so... _moody_ , and having these weird cramps.”

“Is it your back again?” I asked anxiously, placing one hand at the small of her back. “Do you want me to massage it or maybe get you one of those hot water bottle things? My mom used to do that for my sisters when they got their monthly.”

“No.” She placed a hand on her lower abdomen. “It’s my stomach. I think it’s just a bug, or something I ate or something.”

“Is the baby okay?”

“Well, yeah,” she stated. “She’s been moving all day.”

I grinned. “So it is a she?”

Sara rolled her eyes again, fighting not to smile. “Maybe. I don’t know. Why? You think it’s a boy?”

“I think no matter what,” I said, wrapping an arm around her shoulder, “ _he’s_ going to be just fine with a mama like you.”

“And what about you?” She raised her eyebrows, her stare part dubious and part accusatory. “You don’t have a part in any of this?”

I frowned, glancing down at her belly before shifting my gaze to the graves in the yard, my eyes landing on the smallest one. Little baby Charlie. I wanted to believe I could protect the baby in Sara’s belly from the world, but that little grave in the corner stood as a testament to Charlie’s own father’s inability to keep him safe. I was already a failure -- losing you to quarantine, allowing Sara to be hurt so badly at the crime lab. I didn’t want any part in a small, defenseless thing having to rely on me for survival. I didn’t want something else in my life to let down. And, not least of all, I didn’t want something else in my life to lose.

“She’s better off with you,” I decided, my jaw set tight.

“You know I haven’t been feeling well lately,” she began carefully, “with the back pains and now this cramping.”

“No, Sara,” I interrupted. “You’re fine. Some women have tough pregnancies, you know?”

“Nick...”

“Two of my sisters were bedridden for months with their children,” I advised. “Their deliveries were a little rough, but both them and the babies were totally fine.”

“Nick -- ”

“You’re going to be fine, Sara, you just need to -- ”

“I started spotting!” she blurted. I stared at her dumbly, mouth hanging open. “I started spotting last night. It’s not...I don’t think it’s normal. I think something might be wrong.”

“You said the baby is moving!” I accused, my heart hammering hard against my chest.

“She is moving,” Sara hastened to assure me, her expression pleading. “I’m sure everything is fine. I just...I just need to know that if something happens, you’re going to take care of her. She won’t have anyone else.”

“No,” I stated firmly, holding my hand up to ward off her protestations. “You’re going to be fine, there’s no need to worry about -- ”

She snatched my hand, pulling it towards her and pressing it against her stomach before I had a chance to pull away. She pressed hard, much harder than I would have been comfortable doing on my own. I felt it then, a faint movement against my hand. Harder, Sara pressed, and then it was stronger, the thump right against my palm, and I gasped as I regarded her with wide eyes. She smiled as the baby moved, shifting restlessly beneath her skin, her expression quickly turning to one of bemusement when I didn’t respond in turn.

Quietly, pleadingly, she repeated, “She won’t have anyone else.”

“Please, don’t,” I choked out, trying to pull away, but she gripped my wrist in her small hand with a strength that still always managed to surprise me, but Sara had always been stronger than she looked. She would have had to be, to survive her childhood, the virus, those soldiers, this life. “Please, don’t make me, Sara. Please don’t make me love her.”

“It’s okay, Nick,” Sara said fiercely, eyes red, and I don’t know why I felt like she was giving me permission, why I felt like I needed it. “It’s okay.”

“I can’t,” I cried, hot tears escaping my eyes as I shook my head, but my hand was still on her belly. “Please, Sara, I can’t.”

But even as I said it, I knew it was too late. The ache in my chest, the deep well of fear and affection, the instinctive possessiveness and devotion, was too big to be anything else. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

I shifted down one step to kneel in front of Sara, grasping her belly in both hands and pressing my face against it. Eyes closed tight, cheeks wet with tears, I whispered over and over, “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t,” as Sara stroked my hair and held me close, murmuring gently, “Yes, you can,” again and again until the words coming out of my mouth weren’t “I can’t,” but “I’m sorry,” and “I love you.”

* * *

Night fell, and Sara was sick. She was sitting down on the couch in the living room, bundled up in a blanket and shivering despite the fact that it was nearly ninety degrees. Her skin was clammy and pale, and I wiped the sweat from her brow with a damp rag as I watched her carefully in the soft glow of the several candles scattered throughout the room.

“Stop hovering,” she protested, waving away my hand.

“No,” I told her plainly, although I did lean back to give her some space. She grimaced, gritting her teeth as she closed her eyes against the pain. “Are your cramps still getting worse?” She nodded. “You sure they’re contractions?”

“Yeah,” she replied, before her mouth fell open in surprise, eyes wide.

“What?” I asked, sitting up straighter. “What’s wrong?”

“I think I just wet myself,” she stated, her voice laced with awe. She ducked her head in embarrassment, blushing furiously. “Oh, my God, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“No, it’s fine,” I assured her, quickly standing to help her up. I pushed the covers back, my stomach dropping between my knees when I caught sight of the mess between her legs. Even in the dim glow of the candles, I knew right away it wasn’t urine. “Sara,” I barely managed to gasp out. “Sara, you’re bleeding.”

“Fuck,” she hissed. She brushed her hand over her sweatpants, then raised trembling fingertips to reveal sticky, bright red blood. Her eyes met mine, bright with fear, breath quickening in panic. “Nick,” she breathed, right before she doubled over, clutching at her stomach with a loud moan.

I crashed to my knees in front of her. “What is it? Tell me, what’s going on, what are you feeling?”

“I think she’s coming,” she groaned, gripping the couch cushion beneath her with white knuckles, the other hand still on her stomach. “I think the baby’s coming. I have to lay down. Help me get on the floor.”

“Now just you wait a minute!” I nearly shrieked as she began to slide to the floor, my accent thickening with my anxiety. “Sara, you are not having this baby on the floor like a dog birthing puppies on some old towels!”

Despite the dire situation, a smile slid slowly across her face, amused at my incredulity. “Okay,” she said agreeably.

“This couch is a pullout,” I informed her calmly. “Let me just get it open and you can lay down. It’ll be easier for me to see, too, so I can, you know...monitor you.”

She cast me a dubious glance at my words, and I had no idea how in the hell I was supposed to monitor her either. I couldn’t imagine putting my hand...up _there_ or anything of that sort, but she didn’t argue. Taking her hand, I helped her off the couch and into my dad’s old recliner, unable to avoid seeing just how badly the crotch of her sweatpants was soaked through with blood. I turned back to the couch, immediately faced with another pool of dark red on the cushion. God, that was too much blood.

My hands were shaking, stomach in knots, and I felt like a wet-behind-the-ears rookie at my first crime scene, the same one I’d described to you the first time you’d gone out into the field all those years ago, stumbling behind me with bewilderment and fear in your eyes as we maneuvered through the bus crash wreckage.

_“How do you deal?”_ you had asked me, voice wavering with uncertainty.

_“You just do.”_

I needed stay calm and keep my head steady, both for Sara and the baby. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Shaking off the paralysing fear, I quickly extracted the cushions and pulled out the bed, the springs creaking noisily as I did so. The sheets were a little dusty as I shook them out. I placed the blanket from the floor on top of them, careful to fold away the bloodied part, then piled the cushions into a more comfortable, reclining position for Sara. Once that was done, I helped her sit down on the sofa bed, grabbing another blanket to cover her with.

“I’m going to grab some things, okay?” I let her know, as I gently draped the blanket over her. “I’ll get some towels and water so you can clean off, too.”

“I’m sorry about the couch,” she said suddenly, her voice shaky. “And the recliner.”

“Don’t worry about it.” I came up beside her and took her hand, offering her a smile that was much more reassuring than I felt. “I’ll be right back.”

I kissed her forehead, giving her hand a squeeze before grabbing a flashlight off the end table and heading into the kitchen. My fingers slid against the button, slick with what I thought was sweat until I managed to turn on the flashlight and saw my hands were stained with blood.

“Jesus,” I muttered to myself, breathing hard as I furiously wiped my hands on my jeans. I gathered gallon jugs of water, a bucket, washcloths and towels, along with antiseptic and some latex gloves. Rushing back into the living room, the strong tang of iron and pungent odor of urine and feces invaded my nostrils. I dropped my supplies to the floor beside Sara’s sodden sweatpants and underwear lying in a heap nearby.

“Nick,” she murmured, her breath coming too fast. I knelt down beside the couch, taking her hand in mine. Her hair was damp with sweat, sticking to the sides of her face, and she must have brushed it back with her fingers because there was blood smeared against her skin. Gently, I wiped it away with a damp washrag, checking her pulse at the same time, fast and thready like a spooked rabbit’s. “They’re getting worse, coming closer together. The contractions.”

“I know,” I soothed, trying not to think about how pale she was and what that meant. “Drink some water, okay?”

Wrapping an arm around her shoulder, I helped her sit up a little to drink. She only got a few sips in before she cried out in pain, pushing me away and nearly knocking the glass out of my hand as she did so. I carefully set it down on the end table without taking my eyes off of her. Teeth clenched, eyes squeezed shut, fists gripping the bedsheets, I held her comfortingly as she struggled through another contraction.

“Shit,” she breathed, once the cramping pain passed. I eased her back down onto the cushions, my eyes drifting between her legs. The blanket was already soaked through with more blood. Rapidly, I calculated how much blood the human body contained (ten pints), how much could be lost before death (about 33%), just how fast one could bleed out (minutes), and whether or not I was better off knowing this thanks to my CSI training or if it would’ve been easier to fly blind. In thirty seconds she was screaming again, gripping my hand hard as another contraction tore through her, the stain in the sheets growing at a startling rate.

“Sara -- ”

“She’s ready to come out,” she stated fiercely, ignoring my alarm. “I’m going to push on the next one okay?”

“Whatever you think,” I agreed hastily. Squeezing her hand hard, I nodded encouragingly. “I’m right here.”

She cried out, teeth grinding, body coiled as tight as a drum as she pushed with all her might. Still gripping my hand with a force that I was sure would break my bones, she used her other hand to pull one of her knees up. I placed my hand on her other knee, easing it back and hoping I was somehow helping. After a moment, the tension left her body and she collapsed back into the cushions, breathing hard as she wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand.

“I think you should...” she started, but couldn’t catch her breath. She pointed between her legs. “Check the...see if the baby’s…”

“Sara, I don’t know what I’m doing,” I admitted, shaking my head in protest. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Just…” She smiled weakly. “Don’t let her hit the ground.”

I nodded vigorously, reluctantly releasing her hand to shift positions down the bed between her legs. The blanket was lying over her knees, obstructing my view, and I hesitated briefly before reaching out with shaking hands to push it back in one quick movement. No matter how much I’d steeled myself, I could never have prepared myself for so much blood. It was everywhere, on the bed and her belly and her legs, and I wondered how terrible of a man it made me to hope that the baby was dying and Sara wasn’t.

“Nick,” she uttered softly, her eyes finding mine in the candlelight. She was crying.

“I’m right here,” I reminded her again, wiping the sweat from my face, and I realized that I was crying too. “It’s okay, Sara. Everything is okay.”

She gripped her shins and arched her spine, tossing her head back and screaming through the pain as she pushed.

“I see her!” I exclaimed, as the baby’s head began to emerge. “Sara, I see her! You’re doing great, just keep pushing, you’re doing great!”

Sara relaxed, took a breath, then tensed again, one contraction right after another, pushing hard, pushing the baby out, but there was blood too, so much blood. The baby was covered in it, my hands, my arms, the bed, just...everywhere. She was crying, Sara was crying and the baby -- the baby was crying as she finally slid out of her mother and into my hands and she was so tiny.

My God, she was so tiny.

“Sara,” I gasped out, looking at this tiny baby in my arms, cord still attached. Her hair was dark and she was crying and she was beautiful. "Sara, you were right, it's a girl. It's a girl."

_“Nick.”_ Uttered so softly I almost didn’t hear it over the baby.

I looked to her mama, lying back on the couch, skin so pale, hair slick with sweat, and I don’t think I’d ever seen Sara -- strong, fierce, tenacious Sara -- look so small. She was smiling, though, reaching out to me, and I hastily climbed up the bed to gingerly hand her the baby. As Sara wrapped her arms around the little girl, I wrapped my arms around Sara’s shoulders, holding them tight to me as she gazed down into the baby’s face.

“She’s perfect,” Sara sighed, her finger tracing the side of the baby’s face. She leaned her head against my shoulder. “Nick, she’s perfect.”

“I know,” I said, my throat tight, eyes burning.

“Don’t let her…” Sara began, her breathing becoming more and more shallow.

“Sara?” I questioned, unable to keep the alarm out of my voice.

“Don’t let her hit the ground.”

“Sara?” I said again, bringing one of my arms beneath the baby to support her as Sara’s grip slackened. Her head lolled against my shoulder, eyes slipping closed. “No, Sara, it’s okay. I’ve got you, okay? I’ve got you, I’ve got -- Sara? _Sara!”_

I eased the baby out of her arms, placing her gently on the bed beside us before turning back to Sara. I skimmed my fingers across her neck, desperately seeking her pulse but unable to find one. Glancing down her body, I found more blood between her legs and on the bed, the floor, enough that if I’d walked in on a crime scene I would have immediately known whoever had left it behind would never have been able to survive.

“No, no, _no!”_ I screamed, slipping my hands on either side of her face. Her skin was cold. _“Sara! **Sara!** ”_

I slid one hand behind her shoulders, drawing her close to me and burying my face in her neck, my other hand gripping behind her bare thigh, nearly pulling her onto my lap. “Sara,” I cried against her skin, rocking her gently. “Please, Sara, don’t do this to me. Please don’t leave me. I don’t want to be alone. Please, Sara, don’t leave me, don’t leave me, _don’t leave me…”_

And the baby cried on the bed beside us, tiny high-pitched squeals as she searched for a calming tone or a soothing touch in this strange, new world.

* * *

To be continued.


	19. May 13, 2016

* * *

May 13, 2016

* * *

Days turned into nights, nights stretched into weeks, and soon months went by, but this time I didn’t know what I was waiting for. It was obvious now that my family wasn’t returning for me, and yet I couldn’t bring myself to leave. I couldn’t muster up the motivation. I couldn’t gather together the will to care. I didn’t think about what I should be doing, or where I should be going. I just existed, hovering somewhere between this world and the next. I wasn’t dead. At least, I didn’t think I was dead.

_Am I dead?_

Sara was dead. Her body outside in the yard alongside my family’s. I’d dug for hours, until my hands were raw and blistered, and the hole was wide enough and deep enough. Wondering what it had felt like to dig all those other holes, one by one. Then I wrapped Sara up in some clean blankets, laid down her body in the grave, and covered her up. She hadn’t believed in God, and I didn’t think I did anymore either, but it didn’t seem right not to mark her grave somehow like all the others, so I nailed two boards together and wrote her name on it, sitting down in the grass and crying for hours when I realized I couldn’t remember her birth year to write it on there too.

And the baby cried from inside her crib, her tiny baby cries drifting through the open windows into the backyard.

Every minute spent with her was another minute spent reminding myself I was alone. That Sara was dead and it was the baby’s fault. My fault too, or maybe one of those soldiers that had raped Sara, but they weren’t exactly around to lay blame to. Hating the baby was much more convenient, and hating myself was something I already had a lot of practice in.

It was easy in the beginning, hating the baby, especially when she was this tiny, selfish, loud, obnoxious, stinky, helpless thing that relied on me for everything. She always cried, was always hungry, always wanted to be held, when all I wanted to do was wallow in my own self pity -- usually at the bottom of a bottle.

To be honest, I was too drunk to remember most of the first weeks of the her life, steadily making my way through my father’s liquor cabinet. I’m not proud to admit that I left her at home while I drove around, an open bottle of Maker’s Mark between my legs, scavenging for formula and diapers and baby bottles. In another month, my mother’s wine collection was gone, but I found enough booze in the neighboring ranches to hold me over, and when I ran out of that I’d head into the city to see what I could find.

More months went by, and eventually the baby started growing into this little tiny person with a personality and a voice. Wavy hair as dark as night, creamy skin that took so easily to the sun. She was all right, I guess. She didn’t complain much, and was pretty adept at keeping herself entertained. She loved being outside, and definitely wasn’t afraid to get dirty. It was really a sight to see, watching her out there in the front yard as she played in the setting sun, just babbling to herself as she crawled after caterpillars or dug worms out of the dirt, glancing up over her shoulder at me every once in awhile just to make sure I was still there.

I smiled as she brushed the dirt off her hands, before scratching at her cheek and unknowingly leaving a smear of earth across her face. I had the sudden, fleeting memory of wiping the dirt from Sara’s face as she knelt down in front of me in Papa Olaf’s kitchen, looking up at me with big brown eyes -- the same color as the baby’s.

_“Just don’t give up, Nick. It’s always okay to hope. Life isn’t worth living without hope.”_

I scoffed bitterly, rolling my eyes to the sky as I lifted the small bottle of cheap whiskey to my lips. Hope. Look where hope had gotten me. Sitting here in an empty house with a yard full of dead bodies and a baby who didn’t stand a chance out there beyond these property lines. Maybe she didn’t even stand a chance in here, stuck with an irresponsible drunk like me, the same man who had killed everyone he’d ever loved.

I slipped my hand into my back pocket, fingers clasping the edges of a twelve-year-old photograph. It was the only thing I had left of you. The only thing I had left of my old life. The lights of Las Vegas twinkled in the background, the New York City skyline clearly visible, right beside the Eiffel Tower further in the background. I’d unfolded it and folded it so many times there was a crease right down the center, the edges worn and faded from the oils in my fingertips, but thankfully your face was left unobscured. You were smiling, eyes shining, head tilted towards mine. Young and beautiful and alive.

I was pretty sure it had been two winters since they took you. Long after the world had gone to shit, right when mine did. Because as long as we had each other, there was nothing we couldn’t do together. I tried to save you. I swore I did. I hoped if you remembered anything about me, it was that. Not the fights, or the way I never really let you in, or that I never went to any of those bars with you and your friends and how I pretended not to notice the disappointment in your eyes when I said I had to stay home and catch up on paperwork.

I would give anything to go back and spend that time with you instead.

Chances were that you were dead, along with 99% of the rest of the population. And when I gripped my service pistol with white knuckles in the middle of the night, pressing the cool metal into the soft skin beneath my chin, my finger on the trigger, the fact that I wasn’t sure was the only thing that stopped me.

My eyes drifted back to the baby in the yard. Well, her too. I couldn't just leave her like that.

I just hoped that if you were out there somewhere, you weren’t suffering. I’d seen what men did in times of desperation; what men did when there was no one there to stop them, to stand up to them. When there were no more morals, no more rules.

When I thought about what they could be doing to someone like you, I almost hoped that you were dead.

Then I remembered I was supposed to be giving up on hope, and took another swig of whiskey, and pretended I didn’t have any hope left.

* * *

_“Where are you going?” you asked, sticking your head around the kitchen doorway as I pulled my jacket over my shoulders._

_“Brass got a lead,” I said, then patted my back pocket to make sure I had my wallet. “Clerk at one of those extended day motel rooms recognized the perp from the news as one of the guys staying there. You seen my keys?”_

_“They’re on the dining table,” you said dismissively. You crossed your arms over your chest. “We’re going to that winery today, with Jack and Hugh.”_

_I frowned as I sorted through the mail on the table in an attempt to find my keys. “That was today?”_

_“Yes,” you pressed, voice full of frustration. “How long will you be?”_

_“I don’t know, babe, it just depends on how it goes. You know that. Let’s just reschedule.”_

_“We can’t reschedule. Hugh’s leaving Monday.”_

_“Oh. He’s going back overseas already?”_

_“No, he was going back six months ago, but we’ve rescheduled three times since then because of work.”_

_“Where the hell are my keys?” I muttered irritably. The faster I found my keys, the faster I could get out of this conversation and get to meeting up with Brass. Finally, I snatched my keys from beneath some notes for the next crime novel you were working on. “Look, I gotta do this, Greg. It’s important.”_

_“It’s always important.”_

_“Just go by yourself,” I told you, which was really the best solution for both of us. I would rather eat my shirt than walk around a winery for an entire afternoon listening to Jack describe the next art piece he was working on and watching Hugh get too handsy with you after having a few too many glasses of wine._

_“I don’t want to go by myself,” you spat, with a force that surprised me. “I always go by myself. I want you to go with me, because you’re my boyfriend, and -- I don’t know -- that’s what boyfriends do? Go out on dates and do stuff together with friends?”_

_“They’re not my friends, Greg,” I retorted dryly. “They’re your friends.”_

_“So invite me out with your friends,” you shot back, hands held out in a pleading gesture. You shifted into a mock thoughtful pose, finger pressed against your lips before pointing it at me. “Oh, that’s right, you don’t have any friends. Because all you do is fucking work.”_

_“That’s not fair, I have plenty of friends,” I said._

_“No, you don’t, Nick,” you stated, grabbing your jacket off the hook and heading for the door, even though just because I was leaving my house didn’t mean you had to go back to your apartment. “You have me, and one day you might not even have that.”_

* * *

The slam of the door woke me up with a start. I was still sitting in a chair on the front porch, and it was night. The moon illuminated everything in a soft, silver glow; trees casting long shadows, branches crawling across the grass like reaching, gripping fingers. I sat up quickly, the empty bottle of whiskey sliding off my lap and clattering to the wooden floor, unheard to me as my eyes scanned the empty front yard. My heart lept into my throat, breath stuck in my chest.

The baby. Where was the baby?

“Hey!” I shouted, as I pushed myself out of my chair so hard it toppled sideways. I stumbled down the steps into the grass. She couldn’t have gone beyond the fence. Could she have? She knew not to go out there. Didn’t she? _“Hey!”_

I turned around and looked back to the house, windows dark. It was quiet save for the song of the cicadas, increasing in intensity before ebbing away, and my own breath exploding from me in loud bursts. The front door was closed; it had been open when we’d come outside, it must have slammed closed not only in my dream.

 _“Hey!”_ I screamed again, as I ran across the yard and up the stairs and to the door. I wrapped my hand around the knob, twisting it hard only to find it locked. “No! Damn it!” I slammed my fist against the wooden frame, instinctively turning my head towards the flower pot my parents had always hidden their spare key beneath and remembering that I had removed it after scoffing at their predictability.

Without thinking, I slammed my elbow into one of the panes of the front door, ignoring the sharp pains as glass shattered and wood splintered against my skin. Thrusting my hand through the pane, I unlocked the door and thanked God the deadbolt hadn’t been engaged, then pushed it open, the knob slamming against the wall in that way that had always made my mother scream at her careless children during summer days spent running in and out of the house.

 ** _“Hey!”_** I called, my voice raw as it was pulled from me, echoing throughout the halls of the home. I fumbled for the flashlight I always kept on the end table beside the couch, switching in on and swinging the beam of light wildly around the room, screaming all the while. “Where are you? Just tell me where you are!”

I ran into the kitchen, skidding to a stop in the doorway as I caught sight of her sitting on the tiled floor. She had used one of the pots from the lower cabinets to haul in a bucket of dirt from the yard, then dumped a gallon jug of water over. Holding a spoon in one hand, she was digging into the mess on the floor, her other hand clutching a piece of torn paper. She smiled as she saw me.

My breath exploded from me in a dizzying rush as I leaned over with my hands on my knees, but my relief only lasted for one, fleeting moment when I realized exactly what it was she had in her hand. I stood up, my expression thundering, the baby’s eyes reflecting terror.

 _“What did you do?”_ I screamed, slamming to my knees on the floor and snatching the photograph out of her hands. It was only one piece of it, just the top of your hair and part of your shoulder. Another piece was sticking out of the dirt, twisted and folded and -- _“What did you_ **_do_ ** _?”_

Roughly, I pushed her aside, her small form tumbling down to the floor with a dull thud as I dove for the pile of dirt and water, fingers scrabbling at any piece of the photograph I could find. Vaguely, I could hear her crying through the buzzing in my ears.

“How could you do this?” I yelled, my voice cracking in a falsetto alto. “It’s all I have left! It’s all I have left, how could you do this? How could you do this to me? It’s all I have left!”

I couldn’t stop screaming. I didn’t even know what I was saying. I don’t know how much time I spent there searching and digging for the last thing in this life I had to hold on to before I stopped to look at the pieces of shredded paper in my hands. It was destroyed. The whole photograph -- the only thing I had left of you -- was destroyed. I couldn’t even piece it together if I wanted to.

“It’s all I have left,” I cried, hot tears escaping my eyes, voice quiet and raw. I struggled to recall your face, the color of your eyes, the angle of your jaw, the constellation of dark moles on your cheek. I didn’t want to forget what you looked like. I didn’t want to forget. Without that photograph, I didn’t -- how was I going to -- I closed my hands into fists and pressed them to my face, hunched over on the floor, and started to sob. “It’s all I have left, it’s all I have left, it’s…”

I was suddenly aware of a tiny hand on my shoulder. I looked up from beneath my hands to see the baby watching me, face smudged with dirt and big eyes full of worry. Worry for me, her drunk, volatile, moody...caregiver, or whatever it was I was to her. I doubt she knew as much as I did. I swallowed hard, reaching out to wipe away some of the dirt, only effective in smearing it across her skin.

_“Don’t let her hit the ground.”_

“I’m sorry,” I choked out, to her or to Sara, I didn’t know, as I blinked against the sting in my eyes, because that photograph wasn’t the only thing I had left. I swiftly pulled her close to me, gripping her in a fierce hug full of regret and apology, although I wasn’t sure I was reassuring her in any way. “It’s okay. It’s okay. Just don’t...don’t scare me like that, okay? Don’t scare me like that.”

That was when the baby coughed, deep and wet and dangerous.

* * *

I’d never taken the baby off the property before, and while it may not have been very wise to leave her locked up behind the baby gate in the playroom whenever I made a supply run, I didn’t ever want to risk taking her outside. Especially not at night, but I had to get her some medicine right away, and I was too scared to leave her alone. Her cough had been steadily worsening, and she’d spiked a fever of 102 degrees fahrenheit.

You wouldn’t know she was sick to look at her, though; back there in the baby carrier, she was fussing with the seatbelt with ferocity, not understanding why she was confined to this contraption and not liking it at all. Although busy twisting her little body and pulling furiously at the restraints, her eyes remained firmly trained on the window, wide with amazement. The full moon was bright in the darkness without any artificial light pollution, lighting up an outside world she had never been allowed to witness before.

The closest pharmacy to the ranch was too close to the center of town, too dangerous for the baby, so instead I drove several miles out to a convenience store on a long stretch of desolate highway where it would be easier for me to hear any approaching vehicles and hopefully see any unexpected movements with the full moon. My headlights flooded the parking lot as I pulled up to the abandoned building. The white paint was faded to gray, windows and front doors boarded up with plywood. Slowly, I circled around and found no other cars or signs of life. I checked the front again, then back around to the rear entrance, parking the SUV by the back door. It was just a screen door hanging by one hinge, the solid door itself missing.

I watched the door and either side of the back of the building for a little while, but nothing happened. I rolled down the windows and killed the engine, listening in the dark for a while too, and still nothing. I glanced back at the baby.

“I’ll be right back, okay?” I told her, pocketing my keys. “Just wait right here.”

My hand slipped over my sidearm at my waist, pulling it out of its holster. I checked my weapon, making sure it was loaded and cocked before grabbing my flashlight. Then I took a deep breath to steel myself, and popped open the door and exited the vehicle. Raising my weapon and holding the light below it, I cautiously approached the door, peering into the screen and finding a dark and empty hallway. An inappropriate bubble of laughter nearly escaped me at the urge to announce myself as a police employee, despite the fact that it had been years since I’d done it. Old habits died hard, I guessed.

One last look at the baby, craning her neck to watch me through the windshield, and then I pulled the door open and slowly stepped inside.

It was completely silent, and pitch black, save for the harsh beam of my flashlight. I swept it side to side along with my gun, keeping my back close to the walls as I surveyed the store. The back stock room was large and empty, except for scattered boxes and various products, most of which were destroyed. Beyond the open double doors into the store, metal shelving blocked the majority of my view, and there was also a front counter I couldn’t see behind. Carefully, I moved to the side of the store, aiming my pistol squarely down each aisle, heart pounding faster and faster as I waited to find something down each one but encountering nothing.

Finally, I reached the front of the store. I exhaled sharply, wiping the sweat from my forehead and resting my hand still holding the flashlight on the front counter. Suddenly, there was a loud crash from right behind the cash register, startling me. I jumped back and the flashlight slipped from my fingers, the beam swinging wildly for a moment until it disappeared behind the counter. I raised my weapon but I had no idea where I should aim. The noise was getting louder, frantic, metal crashing against metal, and then as abruptly as it had begun, it stopped.

Breathing hard, hands shaking, I kept my gun trained on the counter, waiting.

“I’m armed,” I stated forcefully, trying to hide the tremor in my voice. “I’m a police officer.” I rolled my eyes. What had I said about old habits? “I used to -- I used to be a police officer. Just come out -- slowly.”

Silence.

I crept closer to the counter, holding my breath as I approached the edge. The light was glowing from the floor below, too muted to be helpful. It must have rolled beneath something. So slowly, I peered over the edge of the counter, two eyes meeting mine for a split second in time before a high pitched shriek tore through the air, and then there was a burst of speed and flurry of movement.

“Fuck!” I exclaimed, staggering backwards so fast I tripped over my own damn feet, falling right on my ass. It was a raccoon or possum, something small, too dark for me to see. The animal screeched as it jumped out from behind the counter, knocking into several fallen items before scurrying out of sight.

“Oh, my God,” I breathed, raking a hand through my hair as I willed my heart to stop pounding against my ribcage. “Shit.”

I laughed unsteadily as I pushed myself up, still shaky with adrenaline. Once I retrieved my flashlight, I headed back out to the truck to grab the baby. She was waiting for me with big, worried eyes, relieved at the sight of me. I smiled reassuringly as I unbuckled her from her car seat before balancing her on my hip as I headed back into the store, her small hands gripping at the collar of my shirt.

The white metal shelves were mostly empty -- to be expected, but still disappointing as I hurriedly carried the baby up and down the aisles, vainly searching for anything that I thought might help her while keeping one eye on the door. I didn’t even really know what I was looking for. Cough medicine? Decongestant? Antibiotics? Vitamin C?

The meagre items left were mostly useless. Empty boxes, cans, and bottles, once filled with gum, candy bars, water, soda. The greeting cards section was full, along with the holiday section, New Year’s party hats and pennants dated 2014. Right after Morgan had died, before quarantine had started. Before they’d taken you. It had been the last time anyone had celebrated a new year; the next one had rolled in quietly, and the following year -- after Sara and I finally left Vegas for good -- I don’t think we even gave it a passing mention.

The baby coughed, and as I paused to wipe her nose with an old, clean rag from my back pocket, my ears picked up the sound of a car engine right outside the front of the store. The plywood boarding up all the windows must have muffled the sound of it approaching, because it was already right in the parking lot.

“Shit,” I breathed, quickly turning and heading towards the back of the store. I rushed through the center aisle as fast as I could in the dark with a baby in my arms, guided by my flashlight. Once I was in the storage room, light spilling in from the open back door allowed me to see without it, so I stuffed it into my back pocket and withdrew my gun from my holster. I placed my back against the wall right beside the back door, holding the baby on the other side of me as I carefully peered outside.

It was an old, beat up 1970s Chevy Impala with two doors, the ugliest shade of green I’d ever seen. A woman was sitting inside of it as she came around the corner, stopping immediately once she spotted my SUV. She looked about in her fifties, with red hair pulled into a ponytail. She had a small mouth, her lips pulled into a thin line as she surveyed my truck with sharp, green eyes.

I held my breath, waiting. Gangs ran the cities, especially near the state borders, and I found it hard to believe she would be traveling alone. More likely, she was bait, a faux maiden in distress, and once I let my guard down others would sweep in for the kill. Her eyes slid to the door and I slipped back into the shadows to remain out of sight, and although I didn’t think she had seen me, she _had_ seen my truck -- too clean and maintained to be abandoned -- and when she shifted the car into reverse I knew I couldn’t just let her leave.

Gun cocked and raised, I burst out of the doorway, holding the baby away as much as I could manage. The woman startled with surprise, eyes wide as she watched me swiftly approach her car. Any other time, she might have sped away, but I think the baby threw her off and she couldn’t figure out how to react before I came up right beside her closed window. My gun was pointed at her head, finger hovering beside the trigger.

“Put the car in park and turn it off!” I shouted, face twisted in the fiercest scowl I could muster, the same one I’d used countless times wrangling dangerous suspects, adrenaline spiking in my blood. Her eyes darted from the gun to my face to the baby. “Put the car in park and turn it off, lady!”

She turned to the wheel slowly, trembling fingertips wrapping themselves carefully around the steering column gear shifter and placing it in park. Then she turned the engine off, leaving the keys in the ignition and holding up both of her hands in a show of surrender.

“Slowly step out of the vehicle,” I commanded, voice still gruff. The baby ducked back against my shoulder, hands clenching and unclenching the sleeve of my jacket anxiously as the woman opened her car door and pushed it open, one foot coming to rest on the ground before the other joined it. Carefully, she got out of the car and took a step to the side, hands still raised, but left the door open in what I was sure was a calculating move. I kicked the door shut forcefully and she flinched at the movement and sound. “Who are you with?”

Her eyes had been resolutely focused on the gun aimed at her, but now they rose to meet mine with confusion. “I’m not with anyone.”

“You’re alone?” I scoffed, eyeing her petite frame before casting a quick glance into the vehicle. It was filled with luggage, water bottles, snacks, and clothes; she was traveling, possibly living out of her car. Maybe she wasn’t lying.

She must have mistaken my dubiousness for a leer, because when I turned back to her, her posture had stiffened and she’d shifted back defensively. Her gaze darted between myself and the baby, a new type of fear dawning in her eyes, and I pieced two and two together pretty quickly.

“No,” I hastily told her. “That isn’t what I want from you. And that isn’t -- the baby’s -- _no._ ”

“What is it you want?” she asked slowly.

“Nothing,” I replied, taking a step back as I lowered my weapon, keeping it at my side. “I wanted to make sure you weren’t going to come back with anyone else. There’s a lot of gangs…”

“Bait and switch,” she murmured in acknowledgement, still watching the gun in my hand. “I’m not with anyone. I came from Florida -- Miami. I’m on my way to Chicago, just making a pit stop.”

“In Texas?” I inquired suspiciously. There were certainly more streamlined routes to get from Miami up to Chicago, Illinois.

“Houston, specifically,” she explained. “The CDC in Atlanta was destroyed. I wanted to see the Texas Medical Center, if there were any survivors there, or supplies, or...I don’t know.”

The Texas Medical Center was one of the largest medical centers in the world, most famous for its air ambulance services, with tens of thousands of doctors, scientists and researchers. It had never occurred to me to go there; maybe Sara would have had a fighting chance if I could have convinced her to make the trip.

“Was there anything there?” I asked, after a moment.

She shook her head ruefully. “No.”

The baby coughed wetly, her little body spasming with the effort. The woman looked to her again, hesitant before speaking up. “I’m a physician. Emergency department. That’s quite a cough she’s got there. I can take a listen.” I eyed her warily, instinctively turning the baby away from her protectively. The woman held up her hands placatingly. “Let me show you my kit. It’s right here in the backseat.”

My eyes fell to the backseat, neck craning to see. I regarded the woman warily, nodding after some consideration. Slowly, she opened the back driver’s side door, pulling out a beat up, oversized, black leather bag, the handle taped together with shiny black electrical tape.

“My name’s Kerry, by the way,” she said, as she placed the bag on the trunk of the car. She pointed to it. “May I?”

“Just open it,” I said, edging towards her. Kerry did as I said, then took a step back, and I peered inside to find a stethoscope sitting on top of various other items: a reflex hammer, a blood pressure cuff, tongue depressors, alcohol wipes, rolls of gauze, and more. My gaze rose to meet hers and I nodded.

“What’s her name?” Kerry asked, as she pulled out the stethoscope, putting the earpieces in before turning to me. I frowned, startled, but Kerry took my silence as hostility, continuing on seamlessly and smiling at the baby. The woman’s green eyes were sparkling as she engaged her, the baby shying away but interested. Besides myself, Kerry was the only other person she had ever met, and I don’t think she quite knew what to do. “Hey there, sweetheart. Are you not feeling well? Can I take a listen? I’m just going to take a listen, okay?”

She wiped the stethoscope with an alcohol wipe before slipping the garbage into her pocket, then lifted the baby’s shirt and pressed the end of it to her chest. The baby squealed in surprise, making Kerry laugh. “I know, it’s cold!” Her brow knotted in concentration as she listened, moving the chestpiece around. “She feels warm, she’s got a fever?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I responded, ignoring the curious glance she shot my way for the polite response that was still ingrained in me. “About 102.”

“When did it start?”

“Today.”

She asked me to turn the baby around and I did, holding her against my chest as the doctor now listened to her back. Finally, Kerry took off the stethoscope and placed it over her neck with the ease of familiarity, taking a step back and sighing.

“Well,” she said, “she’s got crackling in both lungs, a little bit of wheezing. It sounds like the infection has really settled in her chest. Ideally, I’d give her a breathing treatment to loosen her up, but we don’t really have that luxury right now. I have some steroids you can give her, once a day for five days. I’m also going to give you some antibiotics. Without vaccines, and God knows what else is out there, it’s better just to cover all our bases. Those will be twice a day for ten days.”

She sifted through another few bags in her car, sorting out some medication into two different bottles and handing them to me one at a time, indicating which was which. They were pills, and I had the fleeting image of fighting with the baby to get her to swallow them, like wrestling with a sick dog trying to get it to take medicine, but Kerry assured me I could crush them up and give them to her with some food. She even gave me some other powdered stuff in case the baby’s stomach got too upset from the medicine, and warned me to watch for dehydration in case she started with any vomiting or diarrhea.

“She’s going to get worse before she gets better,” Kerry warned me, expression sympathetic. “Just keep an eye on her. She’ll be okay.” She turned to the baby, smiling wistfully as gentle fingers brushed across the baby’s hair, smoothing down the soft curls. “You’ll be okay, right? Yeah.” The doctor’s eyes met mine, sheepish and sad all at once. “I had a son once,” she stated, but didn’t elaborate any further. Didn’t need to; she was traveling alone, after all. “A wife too. But the virus didn’t take her.”

“Quarantine?” I assumed solemnly.

She shook her head. “No. Firefighter. She died on duty long before the virus came along.”

Her eyes were glittering as she regarded the baby, and I wondered if she was seeing her wife in the absence of the baby’s mother.

“Well,” she went on, stepping back to place her stethoscope back in her medical bag. “I have a long drive ahead of me.”

I cleared my throat. “My place isn’t far from here.”

“That’s all right,” she replied, to my implied invitation. “But thank you.”

She finished putting away her bags, and once she settled into the driver’s seat, window rolled down, I couldn’t help but ask, “What’s in Chicago?”

Her gaze drifted, eyes seeing something I could only imagine. Skylines punctuated with the Sears Tower, the John Hancock Center; cityscapes featuring the Michigan Avenue Bridge, the El station at 300 West Chicago Avenue, the park at North Avenue Beach. Coworkers that became family, in hospitals and police stations and fire stations. Doctors and nurses and patients. Spirit and ambition, life and death and rebirth. She smiled then, hesitant, but her eyes were sparkling, excited.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, turning the engine over. “But I can hope. Life’s not worth living without hope, right?”

A breath slid out of me, stolen right from my lungs as the echo of Sara’s words hung in the air between us. Words I’d recalled just today, scoffing bitterly at the idea of living with hope, knowing where it had gotten me. Where I thought it had gotten me. But as Kerry waved at the baby, grinning, as she shifted into reverse and drove away, out of sight, on her way to her destination, I thought...perhaps I hadn’t arrived yet.

I looked at the baby, her big brown eyes focusing on me intently, wondering where we were heading next on our adventure tonight.

“How about California?” I asked, and while her only answer was to sneeze in my face, I took it as a yes.

* * *

To be continued.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep, still going strong! Still intending to finish too. Thanks for continued support despite the length of time it's taking me to finish this damn thing! And, yes, that was totally a cameo by Kerry Weaver from E.R., the first show I ever wrote fanfiction for. :)


	20. May 20, 2016

* * *

May 20, 2016

* * *

I’m not sure if I’d known just how dangerous it was going to be getting out of Texas that I would have made the trip. If I’d known that there would be more blood on my hands, maybe I would have just stayed in my parents’ ranch, safe and sound with the baby. Even if all those motherfuckers had deserved to die. But that’s getting ahead of the story.

It took about a week to gather together the necessary supplies to make the trip to California. I’d backed my SUV into the garage for easy access to the trunk from the kitchen entryway, then started packing away the items in the kitchen pantry. As I’d headed down the few steps into the garage, arms laden with bags, a gleam of chrome peeking out from beneath a canvas tarp on the other side of the oversized garage caught my eye. Placing the bags on the floor, I stepped over to my father’s truck and pulled the tarp back, revealing a navy blue exterior with white vinyl stripes, the interior a light baby blue. I ran my fingers over the hood; the engine had been replaced by a professional restoration shop years ago, it was more than capable of getting us where we needed to go. All of my parents’ other sentimental items had been taken by someone in my family, gone before I’d been allowed a chance to stake my claim on anything, maybe it would be nice for me to have something too.

That’s how I found myself driving my dad’s old truck out of the driveway, the baby strapped into her car seat on the bench seat beside me, and all of our things wrapped tightly beneath a tarp in the cab behind us.

Fifteen hundred miles to go. Fifteen hundred miles until I got to you. It had taken Sara and I about five days to get to Dallas from San Gabriel, but enough had changed over the course of one year that I could immediately tell it was going to take much longer getting back. Highways and roads had been destroyed through warfare or blocked off by natural disasters, car crashes, or just plain neglect. I was forced to drive south towards Mexico, much closer to the border than I was comfortable with, but I didn’t have a choice if I wanted to head west.

Hours stretched on, the baby dozing beside me as we moved through the desert. Looping around the Guadalupe Mountains, I thought of all those times you’d gone hiking with me at Red Canyon or Lake Mead in Nevada, grumping the entire way about the heat or mosquitoes or how heavy your backpack was, and when was it my turn to carry the tent? I shook my head, smiling ruefully at the flood of memories, unexpectedly blinking back a stinging in my eyes as I realized you hated the outdoors -- unless there was sand to stretch out on under the sun and tan or high ocean waves to surf in -- and yet you’d never denied my request for your company when I suggested heading out into the mountains. You’d done it for me, to spend time with me, and there I had been unable to afford you any spare hours of my life because I thought they were better spent working.

I rolled my eyes at myself, sighing as the mountains faded in the distance, only then catching a glinting flash of light in my rearview mirror from a hill above.

A scout, signaling someone down below.

“Shit,” I breathed quietly, right before one of my front tires blew out. The baby startled awake at the sound, immediately beginning to cry as the truck swerved, and I fought my instincts to hit the brakes or jerk the wheel towards the shoulder. Instead, I gripped the wheel hard and allowed the vehicle to slow down before gently slowing to a stop.

As soon as I put the car in park and turned it off, I reached behind me to the gun rack, pulling the automatic assault rifle onto my lap and cocking it at the same time as removing my pistol from its holster at my side, pulling the slide to load it as well.

I tuned out the baby’s cries and waited, eyes searching the road around us. I saw the car coming before I heard it, peeling down the highway towards us at rapid speed, kicking up dust behind it. Quickly, I unfastened the car seat and shoved it down into the space in front of the passenger’s side seat as best I could, clumsily laying the baby’s blanket on top of her in an absurd attempt to hide her.

When I turned back to the window there was a man standing there, startling a gasp out of me. It was hard to tell his age; his skin was dark brown and weather-worn, deep wrinkles at the edges of his eyes and sides of his mouth. There were faded green tattoos on his face and neck, and the knuckles gripping the .45 aimed directly at my head.

Another man came up beside the passenger’s side window, also dark-skinned, but younger, tall and skinny, with hollow eyes -- hungry. The baby pushed the blanket off of herself, big eyes watching the man at her window, craning her neck to see. He smiled at her, revealing tobacco-stained teeth punctuated with gold caps, waving a bony hand with dirty fingernails at her. Scared, she immediately burst into tears, looking to me for reassurance, but I didn’t dare move. Instead, I held up my hands in surrender but kept them hovered right above the guns in my lap.

 _“¿Qué tranza?”_ the man at my window said, through the two inches I had rolled down my window as we’d driven through the mountains, enjoying the fresh sent of the pines. “What you doing driving through here, white boy? Don’t you know who runs these highways?”

 _“¡Qué linda!”_ the other man exclaimed, focused on the baby, still smiling as he pulled at the locked door handle. His eyes were glittering with delight, expression eager as he regarded her tear-stained face, her tiny hands reaching for me. _“¿Qué es esta? ¿Es un bebé?”_ He sneered, offering me a challenging stare that turned my blood to ice. _“¿Un bebé muy bonita, si?”_

“Ain’t nobody goes in and out of Texas without going through us first.” The man at my window pulled at the locked door handle on my side before pointing the gun down towards it, indicating for me to unlock it. _“Abre la puerta.”_

My breath quickened, heartbeat pounding against my ribcage as I took stock of my situation. The other car was still fast approaching, would be here any second. I couldn’t let these men take my guns, and I had to disarm them before the other car got here or I was as sure as dead, and the baby, there was no way I was going to let them take the baby. There was only one thing for me to do.

I had to kill them.

 _“¡Abre la puerta!”_ the man beside me commanded forcefully, knocking his gun against the window with a hard crack. I blinked, nodded stiffly, and very slowly reached towards the lock and slid it open. Swiftly, he opened the door, reaching inside for my weapons, rough voice murmuring, _“¿Qué paso con -- ?”_

That was when I slipped my hand down, tipped the muzzle of my pistol towards him, and pulled the trigger. A bloom of red blossomed on his chest as he stumbled backwards. I wasted no time and shot him again, simultaneously wrapping my hand around the rifle still in my lap, already pointed towards the other window. The man at the passenger’s side stupidly jerked the handle of the locked door in his panic, giving me plenty of time to pull the trigger. The window shattered in a rain of glass as the bullet tore through it, right before the man’s face exploded. He crumpled immediately, his body hitting the side of the truck with a dull thud before reaching the ground.

The baby was screaming, shrieks of terror, and she might have been injured from the spray of glass but there was no time to consider her with the other car racing to meet us.

I holstered my pistol and flung the door open, stepping out and using the door to protect my body, rifle between the truck and the door aimed downrange towards the car that was right upon us. I shifted the gun into full automatic mode and didn’t hesitate to fire, bracing myself as I sprayed the windshield with bullets from right to left and back again. The car swung wildly to my left, spinning out before crashing into the guardrail at the side of the road.

I waited as the dust cleared. The wheels of the car were still spinning at full speed; the driver must have either been dead or unconscious, foot pressed against the accelerator. I couldn’t see any movement from inside, but it didn’t mean someone wasn’t waiting for me to make a move first. I blinked away a stinging bead of sweat from my eyes, about to take a step back when I felt the muzzle of a gun press against the back of my neck.

 _“No te muevas,”_ a voice from behind me said. The scout up in the hills. _Fuck._ “Don’t move.”

His voice was trembling. He sounded young. Nervous. Nervous people did stupid things.

 _“Todo est_ _á_ _bien,”_ I stated placatingly, aiming my gun up towards the sky, my other hand also raised. I listened but could only hear the harsh exhalations of the man behind me, and there continued to be no movement from the disabled car in front of me. The baby was still crying, confused and scared stuck inside her car seat wedged awkwardly between the bench seat and the dashboard. _“Mira. Es solamente yo y la niña. No quiero problemas. ¿Qué quieres?”_

“What I _want_ is your truck, _gringo_ ,” the man shot back, shoving the gun into my neck. “You can have the fucking baby.”

My eyes traveled over the expanse of desert around us. We wouldn’t survive out here without food or water, or a way to get out of here. There was no way I could let this guy take my truck, even if he was offering it in lieu of violence. I let out a deep breath, nodding slowly.

“All right,” I agreed. I felt him take a step back, the gun removing itself from my skin, right before I swung around and smashed the muzzle of my rifle into the side of his face at the same time as using my free hand to grab his wrist holding the pistol, twisting it to the side painfully while using my own body for leverage. He staggered back, surprised, the gun sliding out of his hand as I felt the bone snap in his forearm. He cried out in pain, falling back against the cab of the truck, cradling his arm against his chest before tripping over his own feet and falling right on his ass. I had my gun trained on him in an instant, my entire body vibrating with barely restrained energy as I gazed at him down the barrel of my rifle. _“Don’t move! Don’t fucking move!”_

“Okay!” he conceded, trying to hold up both hands, his right arm bent awkwardly where the bone had broken. “Okay, okay! _Pero_ \-- please -- just don’t -- don’t shoot me. _¡Por favor!_ Don’t shoot me!”

Blue eyes blinked up at me from beneath dark lashes wet with tears, struggling not to cry. Damn it, he was just a kid, scrawny and scared, dirty clothes nothing more than tatters. I let out a breath, frowning as I relaxed my posture and lowered the rifle marginally. His eyes slid to the gun on the ground, then back to me.

“No!” I shouted, but it was no use. He scrambled for the pistol, but I was faster. A crack of lightening rung through the air, the kid’s body tumbling backwards as the bullet tore through his head.

“Damn it!” I cried, clenching my jaw as I looked up to the sky. I looked back to the boy. “Why’d you have to move? Why? _Why?”_ I groaned with frustration before kicking the blown out tire of the truck. “Damn it!”

I rubbed my eyes with one hand, composing myself before turning to the crashed car on the other side of the road. If there’d been any survivors, they undoubtedly would have ambushed me when the kid had had me at gunpoint. An inspection of the vehicle revealed only one occupant -- the driver -- his body riddled with bullet holes, face half missing and bone and brain matter splattered across the interior. I took note of his tattoos, some fresher than others, all of the newer ones crudely drawn and matching symbols and words written on the other three. A gang, and I recalled what the first man had said to me, about running the highways in and out of Texas.

It was a big state, and while it might have seemed unlikely one gang could run all the borders, after what had happened on my way in with Sara, and now on my way out with the baby, I’d never take the chance to come back. So I dragged the bodies out of the road, quickly changed the tire, buckled in the baby (who’d by now exhausted herself crying and lie sleeping in the car seat), and said goodbye to Texas for the last time.

* * *

California was on fire.

Before we even hit the border, I could smell it, the scent of burning wood carried down Interstate 10 into Arizona by hot, dry winds. A haze of smoke blanketed the skies, growing thicker the closer we got. By the time we reached the state, a dense fog had obscured the air, and once we hit Joshua Tree National Park, where the Mojave Desert and the Colorado Desert met, it was impossible to travel any further. The smoke was too heavy to see.

It had to be wildfires. California, Oregon, and Washington were infamous for them. Millions of acres burned each year even with firefighters actively fighting fires around the clock. Without anyone working to control the blaze, I could only imagine how bad it was out there. Entire cities could be destroyed, including Los Angeles.

Including San Gabriel.

Damn it, we’d been only two hours away. God only knew how long it would take us to get there now. I slammed my fist against the steering wheel in disappointment, startling the baby, who had been keeping herself occupied with a stuffed pony filled with some kind of crinkly paper (she liked the noise), its saddle adorned with tassels and cowboy hat trimmed with red fringe. She looked at me for a moment before she sneezed, blinking red, watery eyes against the polluted air running in through the vents of the truck.

“Yeah,” I sighed, nodding at the baby. “Let me just look at the map and we’ll get out of here.”

The freeways were in shambles, the risk of gangs in the cities too high to travel them anyway, so I had to stick to the side streets and backroads with the aid of a pretty inadequate map. (I hadn’t been able to find a decent one at any of the stores I’d rummaged through.) The condition of the streets and access to them was worse than any area I’d encountered so far, making me turn back around and detour I don’t know how many times. I’d gotten to high enough altitude at some point to see bright flames licking at the sky from the San Bernardino National Forest, located just northeast of San Gabriel, and I wondered if the blaze spanned all the way to the Angeles National Forest that stretched over San Gabriel to the west.

Two hours turned into three, then four, and by the time we hit six I was exhausted, but determined to make it to you. The closer we got, however, the denser the smoke grew, along with the agonizing conclusion that there was no way anyone could possibly be living in these conditions. It was so dark, even at the height of daylight, all of the plant life was dead; ponds and lakes were completely empty. It seemed like all of the buildings and homes that weren’t actively on fire had already burned to the ground. There wasn’t a single sign of life, no indication that anyone had come or gone in any recent amount of time.

Southern California was a wasteland.

Still, we were so, so close, there was no way I could turn back now, not without stepping foot on your front doorstep, not without knocking on the door, without seeing your childhood home with my own eyes and finding out who or what was in there. I hadn’t driven thousands of miles from Texas, spent months in Las Vegas and then California waiting for you, hours on the phone with quarantines searching for you, risked my career and freedom running away with you, _ten years of my life_ being with you, just to turn back now.

Hour eight, my bleary eyes burning, throat swollen and stinging, we finally made it into your neighborhood. The baby had long since fallen asleep, although a deep, wet cough just as bad as mine from inhaling all this smoke kept waking her intermittently. Slow moving through streets, having to weave around cars and debris, jumping sidewalks and driving through yards, it was hour nine before we pulled up in front of your childhood home, what had been Sara’s and my home for six months, what had been Papa Olaf’s home when we headed out to Texas.

What was left of it.

The building was charred black, exterior walls burned away and wood framing exposed like the ribs on a skeleton of a beached whale. The front door was gone, the plywood that had boarded up the windows while we’d lived there and the glass in the windows themselves were gone too. Part of the roof had burned off, revealing most of the chimney, bricks crumbling away.

“Fuck,” I breathed, and gripped the steering wheel hard, laying my forehead against my hands. Hot tears spilled from the corners of my tightly closed eyes, dripping onto my lap, my breath coming in short bursts. God, what had I been thinking? That after two years, after losing everything, against all odds, that somehow I’d have some kind of stroke of luck, some kind of miracle happen? To _me?_ To the guy that had not only failed to keep everyone and everything he’d ever loved safe, but had also managed to get them all killed? What was I, some kind of idiot?

I don’t know how long I sat there quietly crying, mindful of the sleeping baby beside me. Finally, I sat back, angrily wiping away at my tears as I pulled myself together.

“Damn it,” I wheezed. “Damn it. Damn it, damn it, damn it.” I took a deep breath, then another, and another. “Okay. Okay.”

Obviously, no one was here. No one alive. Olaf had been so adamant about waiting for you, I had a feeling he would have rather died in this fire before even considering leaving. He probably would have _wanted_ to die with his home, the one he built with his hands, where his wife and little girl had lived, where you had lived. I couldn’t leave without searching for his remains.

I pulled out a bandana and tied it around my nose and mouth. Then, I put the truck in park and killed the engine before stepping out of the vehicle, closing the door gently behind me as to not wake the baby. I made my way up the sidewalk, carefully onto what was left of the front porch, and to the doorway of your home. Placing my hand on the brittle, dry wood frame, I peered inside through blurry eyes as I blinked back the sting of smoke and tears.

It was difficult to navigate through the house. I tried to walk on the support beams, watching out for holes and weak spots in the floorboards, conscious of the hazard of falling debris from above all while searching for remains with my flashlight. Papa Olaf had always stayed upstairs in Jan and Annie’s bedroom, but once we’d left he’d decided to set up camp in the living room. I started there first, and it was apparent someone had lived there but there were no bones to be found, just piles of burnt items, the metal springs from two mattresses, the frame of the couch. The exterior wall had burned away, leaving the room open to the elements; if animals had gotten inside, maybe there wouldn’t be any evidence of a body.

The kitchen was next. Then -- carefully -- I made my way to the bedroom upstairs, my foot falling right through one of the stairs and ripping my jeans on a nail in the process. The roof here was mostly gone, the room sparse, and I kicked around the rubble for a while but still found nothing.

Back downstairs, I went through the other rooms of the home, saving yours for last. With a deep breath to steel myself, I walked to the threshold, aiming my flashlight inside and sweeping it right to left. Your bed had burned, posters warped on the walls, your ancient desk in a pile of wood and ash. A sob burst out of me, and I quickly swallowed it down, wiping away the tears at my eyes with my wrist to avoid my dirty hands, then forced myself to continue on.

I got back into the living room when I heard the baby crying out in the truck. I’d been here for quite a while, and though I’d done my best with what I had, it wasn’t anywhere near the thorough search I would’ve done with Catherine or Sara -- or you -- while on scene with the crime unit. I supposed I’d never really know if Olaf had died in here, and as I glanced around one more time with my flashlight, I sighed heavily, chest tight with sorrow and regret, hesitant to leave.

The baby shrieked.

“All right!” I called, turning towards the door as a gust of wind swept through the living room. I raised my arm to shield my eyes as it picked up ash and dust, scattering it across the room along with various piles of trash and debris. Something shiny on the floor caught my eye, all the way in the corner of the room by the fireplace. I frowned, curious as I carefully crossed the room, blinking against the growing wind. Brow knotting, I kicked away some ash with the toe of my boot, stopping short as I caught sight of the corner of an old, familiar photograph.

There was only one other person in the world who had had a copy of that photograph.

 _“Greg,”_ I breathed, dropping to my knees on the floor and nearly killing myself in the process as one of my knees dropped into a weak piece of wood. My palm hit the floor to break my fall, skin stinging as it was scraped away, but I didn’t even feel it as I quickly brushed away the dirt to reveal the New York skyline and the Eiffel Tower and your beautiful, smiling face, my shining beacon of hope. The wind pulled the photograph off of the floor and I hastily snatched it out of the air, gripping it tightly in two hands by the singed edges. I rubbed my thumb over your face, laughing as tears fell from my eyes. I whispered your name over and over again, as if I said it enough it would conjure you like a children’s fairytale.

You had been here. Somehow, you had gotten back to Las Vegas, because you hadn’t had this photograph on you when you’d been taken to quarantine. That meant you’d been back to your apartment in Las Vegas. Maybe you had searched for me or Sara, waited as long as you thought necessary, before heading out here and finding Papa Olaf. But why wouldn’t you come to Texas after that? Maybe something had happened, Olaf’s health deteriorating, and he’d been too sick to travel. Maybe he’d just insisted on waiting here. You would never leave him, not after he’d faithfully waited for you this whole time. Maybe you just didn’t know how to get to my parents’ ranch. Who knew? It didn’t matter. What mattered was that you’d been here. _You’d been here_.

“I’m coming,” I whispered to your visage, climbing to my knees and stumbling towards the door. God only knew how this photograph had survived. Hell, maybe it _was_ God, or Nana’s spirit, or the universe, and I’m sure you’d have plenty of input on the matter once I told you about it. Once I told you about it. I gave a watery laugh, already excited at the prospect of _telling you things_ again.

I stopped short on the front porch, a sudden realization hitting me. I had no idea where you were. Where to even begin. If you weren’t here, and you weren’t in Texas, where the hell could you be? Back in Vegas? In --

_“Remember Wolf Lake, Nick. I’ll always be at Wolf Lake.”_

Revitalized, I broke into a run and headed to the car, hopping inside and slamming the door shut as I tugged the bandana down from my face and stuck the corner of the photograph into the front dashboard-- well away from the baby’s curious hands. I clapped my hands and whooped with excitement, startling her.

“Let’s go, baby,” I stated, grinning like a fool as I turned over the engine. “One last stop: Wolf Lake, Tennessee.”

* * *

It took us almost five days to get to Tennessee, between the terrible conditions of the roads and having to forage for supplies, including gas, and making a complete detour around Texas. I took naps between long stretches of drives, eager to get to you but not wanting to endanger the baby’s life or my own by falling asleep at the wheel, and also needing to stay sharp in case of any unwelcome guests like the gang I had run into on my way out to California.

Tennessee was as beautiful as I remembered. Sprawling landscape boasted lush forestry and wildflowers that bloomed year-round, the air clear and fresh with the crisp scent of the outdoors. With no humans to push back the wildlife, we spotted several deer and foxes, even a pair of baby black bears climbing a large tree by the side of the road. Their nearby mama bear’s eyes followed our truck with a cautious stare, the baby pointing and giggling out the window after her.

“That’s a bear,” I told her, then repeated it, exaggerating the pronunciation. “Bea _rrrr_.”

“Babababababa!” she babbled gleefully, shaking her stuffed pony vigorously.

“Bea _rrrr_ ,” I said again, my “ _r_ ” morphing into a “ _grr_ ,” and she squealed with delight.

I laughed as we continued our way across Tennessee, the hills and farmland of the middle of the state shifting into the mountains and plateaus of the east. When we arrived at Wolf Lake, the sun was just setting over the Smoky Mountains in hues of pinks and purples, green foliage sprouting up eagerly from the earth into the warm sky. The cabin was located deep in the woods, down roads that weren’t paved, and we ran out of gas about a mile away. The truck rumbled as it stalled until it finally came to a stop.

“How about a hike?” I asked the baby, nothing able to drown my good spirits. I plucked the photograph from the dash, smiling at it before slipping it into my back pocket and exiting the vehicle. I grabbed my backpack packed with supplies from the back of the truck, careful to tie the tarp back down, then retrieved the baby and headed down the road through dense forest towards the lake.

I pointed out the different kinds of birds; a huge pileated woodpecker fervently poking at an old, rotting tree branch; blue jays and cardinals and swallows; even a couple of ruffed grouse, their shades of browns and blacks blending into the brush so well I almost didn’t see them.

When I heard the soft waves from the lake gently lapping at the shoreline, a cool breeze rustling the leaves as it skated through the trees, I picked up my pace, heart pounding excitedly. I had to shove my way through thick, overgrown vines and branches to get through the path leading down to the cabin, which was nestled between the trees right up against the lake. Finally, arms fulls of scratches and yet another tear in my jeans, I stumbled onto the property, backpack in one hand, baby in the other.

My eyes landed on the cabin, heart stopping in my chest. A bad storm had come through, upending a massive tree and sending it toppling over right into the center of the small home. The roof was caved in, the front of the cabin nearly split in two beneath the weight of the tree. The front windows had burst from the weight, the door twisted in its frame, wooden logs rotted and broken.

I stood there, dumbfounded, unable to take my eyes off of the sight before me. My body was shaking, breath stuttering, grip tightening on the backpack in my hand. I was so shocked, I didn’t even have the wherewithal to be devastated. I was just really fucking mad. I’d gone all this way, from Texas to California to Tennessee, mystical photograph in hand, and _this_ is what I get? A cabin with a fucking tree down the middle of it? No. Just -- _no._

I opened my mouth to scream when I heard it -- a dog barking, followed by voices rich with laughter.

Looking to the baby in my arms, I smiled with hope. “Do you hear that?” I asked, and she smiled at my excitement. She started to laugh and I shushed her, turning my ear toward the wind to listen. Yes! There were definitely voices, coming from behind the cabin, maybe -- maybe across the lake?

Hastily, I ran around the side of the cabin, tripping over exposed tree roots but managing to regain my balance before I fell and took the baby down with me. I stumbled around the side of the house, sliding down the small hill that lead to the backyard, stopping short and peering across the water at the other cabins located around the lake.

All the way on the other side of Wolf Lake, there was a dog in the water, prancing happily back to shore with an oversized stick in its mouth. There was an old man standing by the backdoor of a cabin, calling to another man standing on the dock who had a fishing pole in his hands, casting a line expertly into the water safely away from the dog. They weren’t speaking English. The old man waved a small dishrag in his hand at the other man with exasperation, but his tone was teasing. The young man laughed, tossing something lightheartedly over his shoulder as the old man went back inside.

The old man was Papa Olaf.

The young man was you.

* * *

End Part Two (finally!)

Originally, there was to be a Part Three, and I've partially written it, but there was a lot more I had planned for this and I'm not sure I have the motivation to continue considering the fandom is now defunct. I really did love this story, it's honestly my baby, and I feel I that I've left it at a (somewhat) satisfactory stopping point. Thank you to everyone that read and reviewed and gave kudos. :)


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